India the Global Outsourcing Destination

India is the world wide champ when it comes to outsourcing! In a survey of the best cities to outsource to, the first seven slots go to Indian cities with – hold your breath – New Delhi – my home – leading the way!!

And what is the primary reason for that? Here is an interesting point made by the senior person of the company which did the study as per the Yahoo story.

“The labour pool remains a huge advantage in India — you don’t have to spend lots of money training people up,” Sabyasachi Satyaprasad, a senior director at neoIT, told reporters in New Delhi.

I have been convinced that the most important reason for outsourcing to India is NOT its cost but its supply (read earlier story “The Great Offshoring Debate“)! Cost is NEVER the cause – it is the derivative of Supply and Demand! It doesn’t seem that way because we are so obsessed with the money we pay for our goods and services… but honestly, cost or price in a competitive market is not a cause but is caused!

The reason why India remains a great outsourcing destination is because that is the only country in the world – given its talent pool – that you can actually scale your operations without much hitch. In which other country can companies from IBM to Infosys can all project to add >10,000 technical people in a single year? The trained pool from such high caliber companies that becomes available to all is not easily attainable anywhere else! That is, in my personal view, the main reason for outsourcing to India, not the cost of those people.