Vinod Khosla on Indian Outsourcing

Vinod Khosla recommends WTO for anti-outsourcing in US:


* "It's important for India that IT services and outsourcing be part of the open trade, global trade paradigm,"


*"The WTO is about free trade and it's important that some of these things that are important to us be part of those agreements,"



- Reuters



Vindo Khosla had co-founded and headed as the first chief executive of Sun Microsystems Inc, is currently a general partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers (KPCB), a leading private equity firm whose portfolio includes Google.



Khosla has also shown his interest in Bio-Technology and Micro Fiancing:

Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla eyes biotech biz in India

Vinod Khosla's new passion: microcredit

Nasscom's Estimation

People:

The number of IT and ITeS (IT Enabled Services) professionals employed in India has grown from 2.84 lakh in 1999-2000 to an estimated 8.13 lakh in 2003-04 with most of the new recruits being fresh graduates.



Growth:

Total revenue from software products for Indian companies in 2002-03 was around Rs 1000 crore, accounting for a meagre 0.2 per cent of global software product sales in 2002", it said, adding revenue from software products exports declined to Rs 600 crore in the period from Rs 1500 crore in 2001-02.

The GoogleMania

Through Slashdot - Wired Reports on 'Googlemania'



Decaffeinated Jedi writes "As a tie-in with its March 2004 cover story on the search phenomenon that is Google, Wired has posted its Complete Guide to Googlemania. Written before Google delayed its IPO earlier this month, the feature nevertheless offers a series of interesting articles focused on the search engine giant. Particularly interesting sections include Googlemaniacs (in which 'superusers' like Matt Groening and Garry Trudeau discuss how they use Google on a daily basis), a look at how blog comment spammers have taken advantage of Google's PageRank system, and a gallery of hypothetical interface redesigns by a group of artists and graphic designers."

Creativity Guru in India

Edward de bono will be in India. You can locate more information at http://edwarddebono.indiatimes.com.



Edward de Bono is regarded by many to be the leading authority in the world in the field of creative thinking and the direct teaching of thinking as a skill. He has written 62 books with translations into 37 languages and has been invited to lecture in 54 countries. He is the originator of lateral thinking which treats creativity as the behaviour of information in a self-organising information system - such as the neural networks in the brain. From such a consideration arise the deliberate and formal tools of lateral thinking, parallel thinking etc.

Taxing to help Global Firms outsourcing to India

Forbes.com reports that Indian outsourcing tax initiatves taken by government recently is going to to help global firms



The government issued a tax clarification last month, saying multinationals outsourcing their non-core business to India were exempted from taxes to avoid double taxation. But the clarification has raised some doubts about what is taxable and what is exempt. Some industry experts said the tax authorities' explanation sought to include a part of the foreign company's global income for tax purposes in India. A survey carried out by consultancy firm Ernst & Young said that 58 percent of the activities outsourced to India were considered non-core, and were therefore not taxable.

India Hating

India is shining locally but it is being hated in the US.....

‘‘Politicians can’t outsource the vote,’’ said Scott Kirwin, founder of Delaware-based lobbying group Information Technology Professionals Association of America (ITPAA), which compiles data from nearly 100 anti-outsourcing web sites. Kirwin, who launched ITPAA after a large investment bank asked him to train the Indian worker who then replaced him, said only broad consumer revolt will reverse the trend. ‘‘In the 1980s, many people boycotted companies that did business with the apartheid regime in South Africa,’’ he said. ‘‘Many of those same people have more money today and don’t like doing business with companies from countries that work against US politically, like France, or economically, like India and China. Consumer activism is an important part of putting the brakes on the outsourcing movement.’’ - Backlash brews as executives keep shifting jobs to developing countries



Buy this T-Shirt from ITPAA






Even though this site has anti-india anti-outsourcing sentiments I love it. May be because of this...

Links:

Jobs to India -- A Broad Look | Slashdot

Tech Firms Defend Moving Jobs Overseas | Slashdot

The Indian BPO : Explosions and Concerns

NASSCOM predicts explosion in BPO sector & the number of seats in Indian ITeS-BPO space is projected to increase to 2.10 lakh in March 2004 from 1.4 lakh in March 2003.



On the other hand there are concerns about the anti-india-bpo sentiments in the US. Kiran Karnik, President, National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), says, "The business impact of such a bill on the Indian IT industry will not be very significant" but others in the outsourcing and BPO business believe that it will alter the economic and political fundamentals and hurt Indo-US ties. The Pakistani Software Industry which is valued at $50 million compared to the Indian Software Industry standing at $12 billion is worried over the matter and has formed Pakistani Software Houses Association (PASHA).And PASHA wants to cooperate with the Indian software industry to counter restrictions imposed by the US.



The fun doesn't stop here in Asia, in US overwhelming majority of American voters are of the opinion that outsourcing will be an important issue in determining their vote in the November presidential elections according to a survey. One might think it is a huge blow to the upcoming developing nations, but some people are of the view that it is the - "The coming decline of America".



Even after all this hungama, McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) belives that India's grip over offshoring to stay



And last but not the least if you wanna be a part of the debate then you can also join the discussion : "IT outsourcing fears are overblown" on SIFY.



Ultimately the free market's gates get closed when developing nations rise to the shoulders of developed ones and pose competition.

The fall of B2B e-commerce

Rich Smith on The Motley Fool reports about the failures of B2B business-to-business e-commerce. B2B e-commerce was supposed to be a revolution in the marketplace, a new way of doing business that would slash the costs of how businesses bought and sold products to each other.He sights the example of CommerceOne, the rise and decline of it.



"One more telling point: the company's description of its business (you can see it here) no longer even refers to business-to-business as Commerce One's primary focus. Today, it focuses on "Composite Process Management". And while its B2B software still apparently has some ability to generate revenues -- the company has licensed its Commerce One Auction, Auction Services, Buysite, Catalog, and Marketsite packages to Mitsubishi Corporation -- those revenues have fallen by roughly half between 2002 and 2003."

India, China and high skilled workers

Nortel CEO Frank Dunn points out that China, India and other Asian countries are critical to Nortel Networks not only because they are huge markets for Nortel products, but also because of their pool of high-skilled workers.

The shift in the news

Bloggers are causing shift in how the public gets news. Some stories take a route from blogs to the mainstream.

Round table on jobs outsourcing

Heather Tomlinson reports in Guardian - Round table on jobs outsourcing ...
Trade unions are setting up a public inquiry into the flow of British jobs abroad, following a government-inspired "round table" of opposing sides in the debate yesterday.
Trade unions and employees have become increasingly alarmed at the transfer of jobs in the service sector to countries with lower wages, such as India. Operations such as call centres and back-office jobs are particularly affected, especially in financial services.

The Indian Impact on Outsourcing

Nasscom has warned that Outsourcing ban will hurt US companies. And on the other hand McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) suggests that India is likely to maintain its position as a leading player in offshoring for another two to three years on the back of low wages and English-speaking population. On the other hand, high wage locations like Canada, Ireland and Israel may be left behind by second-tier players including China and Philippines.