India: 'Chilling out' for a
pittance By Siddharth
Srivastava
NEW DELHI - They have been
labeled "adventure workers'': Americans and
Europeans joining the Indian workforce. For some
time, India's outsourcing and
information-technology (IT) firms have been hiring
foreigners at higher and middle levels for their
expertise. However, workers from abroad are also
seeking lower-
end
jobs, such as answering phones at call centers,
for a pittance compared with what they could earn
in their home countries.
Most of these
workers have said that the idea behind taking up
such jobs is to "chill out" or "take a break" -
ie, travel in the subcontinent while earning at
the same time. But there are also more serious
dynamics at play, wherein a shortfall of
language-proficient manpower is being plugged by
personnel who might find themselves out of jobs in
more advanced nations because of cheaper options
elsewhere. These foreign workers address a common
complaint by customers abroad: that the English
(or French, German, Spanish or Dutch) spoken by
Indians has a very different flavor/accent that
makes it difficult to understand. In addition, for
certain queries, there is a requirement for
cultural and geographical knowledge.
Although there are no exact estimates of
the number of foreigners answering phone calls in
India, the National Association of Software and
Services Companies (NASSCOM), the industry trade
association, has estimated that there are more
than 30,000 expatriates working in Indian IT and
offshoring companies, three times the number only
two years ago. The total number of foreign
nationals working in India is estimated to be more
than 50,000, with more than 12,000 registered at
the IT hub Bangalore.
Evalueserve, a
Delhi-based company that provides consulting and
research services to corporate clients worldwide,
has estimated that offshoring firms in India will
need more than 160,000 workers with refined
foreign-language skills by 2010. However, the
Indian education system will only throw up 40,000
or so graduates with the required proficiency.
Evalueserve predicts that foreigners will make up
the difference.
Among the firms that have
hired foreigners for language proficiency are
Evalueserve (40 foreigners among a total workforce
of 900, with plans to add another 150 foreigners
this year), Technovate (40 out of 70 workers in a
travel-related process are Europeans, with plans
to add another dozen), and Pune-based GTL Ltd,
which has hired a London-based employment agency
to facilitate its elaborate hiring plans.
These foreign workers are being seen as
emblems of a reverse movement of human resources,
rather than the more usual Indian brain drain to
foreign shores. Typically, the salaries of foreign
executives in India are much lower than their
earnings abroad and at par with Indian employees',
but most firms ensure that their stay here is
comfortable by providing health insurance, free
lodging, and a special leave structure that allows
travel back home as well as providing an
environment that is professional.
"It's a
win-win situation,'' said Sreeram Iyer, chief
executive of Scope International, a Chennai-based
human-resources and software-development
outsourcing operation of Standard Chartered Bank.
"The workers don't only come for adventure. Many
have trouble getting jobs back home,'' he said in
an interview with Economic Times.
In a
recent report, BusinessWeek talked about the
emergence of service providers that assist India's
outsourcers to hire from overseas. These included
Tim Bond, a 32-year-old consultant, who last
October set up Launch Offshore, a London
recruitment firm that caters to Indian call
centers. Bond has found jobs for 100 workers, and
expects to place 200 more this year. Headhunters
India, a leading tech-employment company, has been
quoted as saying it gets about 300 unsolicited
foreign resumes every month, and has found jobs
for about 100 expats in the past two years. At
Team Lease Ltd, India's largest temp agency,
resumes pour in from Africa, Japan, Poland and
Latin America.
Among the names that have
been profiled by the media are Even Eng, a
Norwegian; Myriam Vock (call center Technovate), a
Swiss national; Miki Chiba, a Japanese; Joshua
Bornstein (Infosys), an American; Magdalena
Gazewska (Siri Technologies), a Pole; Paul King
and David Eddison (ITC Infotech), British
citizens; Patrick Schapper (travel consultant),
another Swiss; and Kenny Rooney (GTL, Pune), a
Scotsman. Rooney has been quoted as saying: "India
provided me a growth opportunity that wasn't there
back home.''
Surveys by NASSCOM and
Evalueserve in the past have also indicated that
the passage of jobs between India and the United
States and the United Kingdom is not a "one-way
street". Recently, an industry report by
consultancy McKinsey and NASSCOM forecast that
India's business services and IT exports are
expected to surge more than 25% a year, to US$60
billion by 2010. But there are going to be severe
hurdles in the form of manpower shortages, rising
salaries and infrastructure needs that may make
Indian firms look at international locations to
conduct operations as well as hire foreigners.
Indian IT companies have set up offices in
the US and China, but they have been largely
restricted to marketing, generating new clients
and establishing a countrywide network, which have
created very few jobs, and those mostly for
Indians. In the past couple of years, however,
there have been steps by several IT firms such as
Infosys, Wipro and Satyam to hire Western
employees to deal with local populations abroad
and the need to penetrate markets further.
Last month, Tata Consultancy Services
(TCS), one of India's biggest IT firms, detailed
plans to more than double its US staff next year
in an expansion that looks to cut into a key
market for US giants International Business
Machines Corp (IBM) and Accenture Ltd. TCS is
boosting its US payroll to 1,500 employees from
600 as it focuses on providing more advanced IT
consulting services in the United States.
According to a company statement, there are plans
to hire 13,500 professionals this fiscal year of
which 5,000 will be hired abroad. In 2004, Infosys
Technologies invested $20 million to create nearly
500 consulting jobs in the United States.
Observers say overseas professionals feel
comfortable working in Indian tech firms, as over
the years they have imbibed global practices that
are inherent in their operations now. As Indian
companies continue to expand operations worldwide,
they have adapted their management practices and
strategies to compete in the global marketplace.
Until recently, most Indian software companies
employed Indians in key positions in global
positions around the world. An onsite posting or
assignment was a plum perk that companies offered
budding MBAs (masters of business administration)
and other consultants wishing to move towards
marketing or sales.
But Indian companies
have now begun to realize the significance of
having "local hands in local markets'', and have
started recruiting sales and marketing people in
local markets to represent them. This has not only
created a familiarity among foreign workers about
Indians and India, but also acted as a push to
look for placements when the going is tough
abroad.
Siddharth Srivastava is
a New Delhi-based journalist.
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