Does anyone remember the scene of IT all over the world, when the was a burst in the DotCom bubble and to add to the worry there was Y2K(No IT person can forget the year 2000) which created many problems.Many jobs lost in the US and other IT major countries due to the DotCom burst and there was a major slump in the jobs in the IT field.During that time people looked upon India,just like a tall person looks down at a short person.
People in India who were dreaming of doing something big in the IT industry came under pressure and many companies(Remember one such company called SilverLine Software in Mumbai) shut down as a result of heavy loss as well as lack of projects.Companies started laying off people,this lay off was not only in the USA but in other countries since most of the projects come from the US.The IT scene was very bleak and everyone had lost faith in this industry.But there was Google who had a track record of not a single lay off even during the IT SlowDown.
I remember the days where India was not shown in the selection box of countries while we install Microsoft Windows.But hasnt India improved a lot??Slowly and steadily people started looking at other options other than US and than India was born..or to be more specific new age HiTech India was born.The IT slowdown came as a blessing in disguise for India.Companies started outsourcing work to India and other countries like Brazil,China etc to name a few.IT biggies like Samsung,Oralce,Accenture,Adobe,Microsoft(Do you know that apart from US , Microsoft has only one development centre ouside US and that’s in Hyderabad) started coming to India and opened centres in various cities in India like Bangalore(The Garden City Of India),Hyderabad,Chennai,Noida etc.
One organization who is resonsible for getting all the work from other countries is NASSCOM(National Association Of Software and Services Comapnies) and since,we have started talking about NASSCOM,how can one forget the great Dewang Mehta(1962-2001) who was the President of NASSCOM till the year 2001.He was the President of NASSCOM during the rigid period of IT Slowdown and he told that his dream is that every person in India should have 4 basic neccessities (Now,see that we had 3 basic necessities in life,where has the forth come from)in life ie.ROTI(Food),KAPDA(Clothes),MAKAN(House) and Computer.This dream of Dewang Mehta is slowly taking shape and the time has come that India will be the first choice of IT companies for opening their centres as well as outsource work.
Throughout my article i used one word to great effect.Yes,you have guessed it right its OutSourcing.Some people fear when they use this word because once we use this word,than it means that we have received work that is not of good quality or the work is scrap.Sometimes the work may not be of good quality or it may be involving some sort of testing which they want it to be done by cheap labour.So where exactly do we get cheap labour?Most of the people say that India is the hub of cheap labour.If an Indian engineer goes onsite to the client’s place , than the pay that he gets will be less as compared to what a person who has gone onsite from some other country.So since we do work for less amount,does that make labour cheap.Well,this word “Cheap” has a hidden meaning.Just charging a few dollars less,does not make labour cheap,but the point is that this is just the start of a new beginning(where we wont BEG but still we will GAIN).There are many Indians in Silicon Valley of US ,who have become enterpreneurs and have started their own companies and they are doing well.I remember Mr Gururaj Deshpande, CEO of Symacore Networks(and also Tejas Networks in Bangalore) and i am an ardent follower of his managerial skills.There is Mr Vinod Khosla,the co-founder of SUN(Stanford University Networks) MicroSystems and the Venture Capitalist(VC) of Silicon Valley’s Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.These are just few of those Indians who made it big in the IT Sector and that too outside India.In the years to come,there will be more Indians who would become enterpreneurs in this field.
We say “Failure is a stepping Stone to success” or “Blessing comes in Disguise” and India has taken that blessing and has become one of the countries where IT has lots of contribution in the overall revenues of the country.So this is definitely the birth of a new India and this baby will nurture and become more mature in the years to come.
-Himanshu Sheth
(17th March 2005,8:51 PM)