If anyone has doubts about the great times Indian software and service
companies have in the days to come, a lot of catching up needs to be done on
their reading.
Let's begin with newspapers and magazines. And I am not referring to just
Indian newspapers and magazines that are full of stories on India becoming a
crucial destination for outsourcing software development and business processes.
I am talking of the Newsweek, the Businessweek, the Time, the Economist-the
names which matter. And more importantly, the names who lead and mould opinions.
If these top of the line magazines are writing about how well India is doing,
how Fortune 500 MNCs in the US and Europe are sending more and more work to
India, they must have based this on inputs from global business leaders. These
magazines are giving a much more broader picture of the situation, and playing a
very influencing role in bringing a lot of work to India. Similarly, if one
reads the Wallstreet Journal, or the International Herald Tribune, and Finacial
Times, there is hardly a day when there is no big story on India.
Beyond magazines, if one wants to go in-depth, I would strongly recommend a
book which is making waves these days, and sits on the table of lots of CEOs and
business leaders. Journalist Thomas Freidman's new book, "The World Is
Flat." It is an eye-opener. He talks of how countries like India with a big
and growing, talented and highly entrepreneurial pool, are now aspiring to be
countries with a 36-hour day. This means that they have the capability and
willingness to stretch, and go out of their way to serve the customers. And
qualities like these are giving them big advantages over big and advanced
nations, and therefore the barriers are now being broken and the world, as a
playing field, is being leveled, or flattened. Freidman strengthens his argument
on the emergence of countries like India that will grab bigger and bigger market
share, and keep moving up the business value chain, by adding that some
countries like the US are not ready to grab this opportunity, and some like
France do not want to.
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International newspapers and magazines are not just informing their readers
about the high quality work that is being done in India. To make the case
stronger for India there are stories on the hiring plans of Indian companies,
indirectly indicating that if your job is under threat in the US, you have a
chance in India. Actually, I came to know through one such newspaper that most
mid-scale BPO or software services companies are hiring 50 to 100 people every
month. The reporter, in his article, stresses that "Obviously all this
hiring is not happening for the benches. There is lots of work on hand, and
there is a lot more in the pipeline."
And if anybody says all the opportunity is only in exports, there is news for
him too. A prominently placed story in another leading newspaper that I got hold
of on a flight from Frankfurt to San Francisco revealed that from the 1st of
July this year, all packaged but perisheable food items in Maharshtra will need
to give a help-line number. This is the first step and may actually get
implemented not from 1st July but six months later, and we will see Indian
organizations getting more responsive to its customers, opined the newspaper.
The point that I am trying to make here is that the international media is
now recognizing that India is a country that can deliver, and lots of MNCs are
now outsourcing out of India. Just a year back, an Indian traveling abroad would
wait for weeks before he could spot a few lines of some news about India. The
movement is picking up, and is going to only grow. The evangelizers in the
Indian IT industry have a big friend and supporter in the international media
now. It's up to them, how they can make the best use of this friendship.