India IT industry: Yesterday and today
My first trip to India was in 1996, when I look for companies that can work on the Y2K problem. There was only a few IT outsourcing companies at that time. Many were small, about 250 to 500 workers and they did not have the skills to perform larger software tasks. At that time, India had few mainframe computers, not many personal computers but the salary was low and most companies are eager to fix the Y2K as a new business.
My friend introduced me to “unknown” companies with the western names like Infosys, TCS, and Wipro. We discussed requirements and signed few small contracts, worth about hundred thousand dollars. My manager was not sure if they can provide the services so he asked me to go to Japan, S. Korea and Russia to find alternatives. However, after several visits there I found that their salaries were too high for the work. I went back to India and began serious negotiations where our company would provide additional trainings to their workers to make sure that they could do the works. I found that they are willingly to learn what we can teach. The first training class was in a small hotel in Bangalore. I had over hundred people came, even I insisted that class size was limited to fifty people. Many workers stood in the hall to take notes, some asked me to allow them to stay because they wanted to learn. Their eagerness impressed me so I decided to stay few more weeks and offered more classes. Each time, I was overwhelmed with more people came and they all wanted to learn.
By the time the Y2K bug was fixed, these “Unknown” companies had expanded their operations, hired more people, build more skills, and get to know more about western business. They used this as a launching pad to move into more strategic positions of outsourcing. Their business grew so fast, when I returned to India in 2001, these “Unknown” companies has became “Well known” with more workers, about ten to twenty thousands. Software had become a desirable profession for many young Indians. There was a saying among young girls: “No software job, no marriage”. Of course it was easy to understand why. Software job paid on the average $350 a month when most other jobs paid about $80 to $150. At that time, the pressure of lower cost to compete in a global world had forced many companies to outsource. India was ready to take more IT outsourcing works and improved its economy.
In just ten years, India's call centre operators are supporting hundreds of million people all over the world. From hospitals to banks and everything that need people to answer customers' questions. Its software has helped optimize most financial and banking transactions as well as streamlines manufacturing for large and small companies. Its workers have moved from coding and testing to developing large and complex systems. Their salary is no longer $300 or $ 500 but has became $2000 to $4000. Young girls have new saying: “No software job in U.S, No marriage”, as more software workers are now being employed by Indian IT companies to work in the U.S to be near their customers. As more people work in IT, as more people earn high salary, more supporting businesses are created to cater to them. India has rapidly transformed itself from a poor agriculture country to a global technology power.
Today, India's top five IT companies such as TCS, HCL, Wipro, Infosys and Mahindra have grown into IT giants, each with several hundred thousand workers and compete directly with other giants such as IBM, Accenture. There were thousands of smaller IT companies growing and hiring in every city. Last year, they exported $97 Billion dollars worth of software and will pass the $100 billion in the next few months. Although the fast growing has led to major problem, about two third of their IT graduates may not have the right skills to work in industry. India's leading companies have quickly developed their own schools to train these workers to keep up with high global demand.
This year Indian is taking its next big step in massively educate its citizen to move into the Information age. Throughout India, there is a new wave of entrepreneurs who are developing their own products such as mobile applications and in special areas such as healthcares, social networking, etc. After over ten years working for developed countries, India now has hundreds of thousands of skilled workers who have the experience and knowledge. Many are taking the risk of starting their own companies. Although most of them are still small but they could be big. Just like their IT giants in 1980s with few hundred people and now grow to several hundred thousand workers, things could change very quickly.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
