via Abhi at Sepia Mutiny

These days,  we often compete for projects against US-based companies whose prices are lower. Our clients are surprised and initially assume that when they show us our competitor’s prices, we’ll lower ours.

Instead, we assert that if experience and quality are taken into account, our prices are still 50% or less than a US-based team can offer (disclaimer: since we do project management and design in the US, we are a hybrid, not simply an offshore team, which means that our prices are generally higher than companies based only in India).

Before they understand the real difference, many people jump to the wrong conclusion.  IT outsourcing is dead in India.   It’s not cheaper to develop in India anymore.

Wrong.  It’s still cheaper to develop in India.  In fact, it’s now cheaper at several different levels of quality, which is an advance that helps everyone.

As many of our clients have come to understand, the disparity is not always about price.  It is now often about quality.

You can’t compare apples to mangoes.

The Monsoon season is upon us in India. Always a good time to cozy up and catch a few Bollywood flicks. Especially when you get to watch people dancing around in the rain.

Filmmaker Harini Calamur has assembled a list of her favorite Monsoon numbers, including the classic below, featuring Amitabh Bachchan and Smita Patil. See the rest of her favorites.

I recently wrote a piece for Forbes, a perspective on why the world is still round. Hopefully, the first paragraph convinces you it’s a worthy read (that’s all I’m allowed to post to my blog):

My apologies to Thomas Friedman. I was cursing out the window of a rental car in New Jersey when I realized that the world is still round.

Read article >>

(image via ultrabrown.com)

Taking on the free trade bogeyman

Nothing, after all, will bring back labour-intensive manufacturing to the US. But to be effective, action would entail higher taxes. With the US in the grip of an economic downturn, such policies are unlikely to be vote-winners. That is why we can expect Mr Obama and Hillary Clinton to continue their attacks. As long as they remain rhetorical, they are cost free. At some point, though, America will need to have the debate its politicians have avoided.

Khosla’s Conspiracy

Like other green venture “capitalists,” Mr. Khosla now claims that corn ethanol is merely a springboard for the cellulosic varieties, which don’t draw on food stocks. Of course, his investments in such fuels also come with their own handsome subsidies. As long as he’s on the federal dole, perhaps Mr. Khosla should take a vow of embarrassed silence.

We should celebrate rising divorce rates

Rising divorce rates (in India) tell us one thing for sure: that more and more women are finding the means, and the independence, to walk out of bad marriages and live life on their own terms. If we judge ourselves as a society on the state of our women – and surely that must be a parameter – then this is good news. We do not need to credit either feminism or Western culture for this – the emancipation of women in real terms, across the world, has been enabled by technology, and can be explained most easily with economics.

The smartest unknown Indian Entrepreneur

“We hire young professionals whom others disregard,” Vembu says. “We don’t look at colleges, degrees or grades. Not everyone in India comes from a socio-economic background to get the opportunity to go to a top-ranking engineering school, but many are really smart regardless.

CONTINUE READING

Making Long Distance Partnerships Work

The subject of planning comes up often in talks with long-distance partners. “If you are a mature business person, you understand that a detailed communication structure is required for success in any partnership, whether across the hall, across the room, or across the country,” said Richard Sloan, who runs the small- business radio show and Web site, StartupNation, with his brother, Jeff. The Sloan brothers themselves are now putting that observation to a test.

Leading Indian Telecom Seeking Deal in South Africa

Bharti’s overture is just the latest international foray by an Indian company. Primed by domestic economic growth that has exceeded 8 percent in recent years, some of the country’s largest companies have been looking to grow overseas, just as economies in the United States and Europe slow.

Fareed Zakaria’s Latest: “The Post-American World”

Zakaria’s latest big concept is The Post-American World, a just-released book whose argument he summarizes in a substantial essay in this week’s Newsweek. The basic idea is, the world is becoming a place where the U.S. is not a solo superpower, but rather a complex competitive environment with multiple sites of power and influence. Even as China and India (“Chindia”?) rise, it’s not clear that the U.S. or Europe will fall; rather, everyone can, potentially, rise together — or at least, compete together.

Math Prodigy & Call Girl

One and a half months ago, 23-year-old math prodigy Sufiah Yusof was exposed by a British tabloid earning a living as a call girl. She entered Oxford as a 13-year-old, dropped out after a year and demanded to be placed with a foster family because of her tyrannical father.

iPhone in India
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The NY Times responds to political pandering by the Democratic Presidential candidates.

Still, critics’ charges that trade is to blame are misguided. While trade can hurt some workers, most economists believe it plays a modest role compared with other forces in the economy, including advances in technology, the decline of trade unions and mushrooming executive pay. Many Americans benefit from freer trade, whether they are buying cheaper imports or exporting products.

The article goes on to paint an even clearer picture of global trade’s actual effect on the US economy.

Consider the four million manufacturing jobs lost over the last decade. That number is daunting — and the human pain behind it very real. But in most years the United States generates more jobs than it loses.

Suppose the critics are right and all those workers were displaced by cheap imports and factories moving overseas. Those lost manufacturing jobs — an average of 400,000 a year — amount to less than 3 percent of the 15 million jobs lost each year across the economy. Meanwhile, about 17 million jobs were created annually, which is why the unemployment rate at the end of 2007 was not much different than it was at the end of 1997.

Full article >> 

Watch parts of Sandeep’s panel at SXSW a few weeks ago.

In just a few minutes, he manages to rail against the flat world, Tim Ferris, Thomas Friedman, and people who subscribe to Make Magazine. Well done, angry Indian man.

He also covers the following tips:

• Look for no.
• Save now, pay later.
• Everyone speaks screen.
• Move beyond cost.
• The 24 hour work cycle.
• Small is the new big.

One Night @ The Call Center

I read One Night @ The Call Center a few months ago, when the American  

publisher sent me a review copy. Some parts were so bad, they made me  cry. I was particularly bored by the chapters detailing the protagonist’s unrequited romance, which are set off in bold type for some reason a(though the fact that they are set off in bold is actually useful — the font makes it easier to identify the chapters to skip!).

Topless Meetings are more Productive

“In this age of wireless Internet and mobile e-mail devices, having an effective meeting or working session is becoming more and more difficult. Laptops, Blackberries, Sidekicks, iPhones, and the like keep people from being fully present,” he wrote in November 2007.  ”Aside from just being rude, partial attention generally leads to partial results.”

Wanted: Indian Chefs

Finding them is increasingly difficult due to the second issue – that  of the growing demand for chefs in India itself.  

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Monsoon is pleased to announce our latest service offering. See below: