International India
India’s business landscape is constantly evolving. For years India was the star of the ‘offshore’ service industry and, while there are signs that star may be waning, there are other stars in the ascendant even in the same sector. At the same time, India is also attracting a wider portfolio of state clients.
In mid-December, 20 Afghan civil servants will travel to India. They will be taking part in programmes to enhance their abilities in management, governance, leadership and post-conflict transition. This will be the first batch of civil servant officers from Afghanistan who will be trained at the OP Jindal Global University in Sonipat.
The officers holds ranks of Deputy Director to Director General in various ministries in Afghanistan. Experts in the relevant fields will train them, including visiting faculty members from Harvard, Hong Kong and Singapore universities.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in India, the SVPN Police Academy has been asked to help the Ugandan police set up a police academy. The SVPN Police Academy normally trains police officials who have been recruited by the UPSC (Union Public Service Commission) through all the Indian civil service exams. It is running a programme to send officers abroad to learn about best practice. Officers have been to Singapore, Australia and the US and are soon to be sent to the UK.
And now they have drawn the attention of the Ugandan government which has asked them to go to Uganda to set up a national police academy.
For various countries, India is now offering cost-effective and relevant training and experience. This goes some way to mitigate the effects of recent technology, which have changed the market for outsourcing of services. The increasing use of off-the-shelf software by companies that would previously have ordered bespoke software means that there is less demand for cheap computer engineers.
Some of India’s largest software companies were known as ‘body shops’ because they could throw as many engineers at a project as they needed. That market is slowing, along with the market for hosting servers as more departments, companies and agencies use the cloud for both computing and storage.
Earlier this year IBM deployed a cloud-based network that, for the first time, put together on the same platform 750 of India’s top car manufacturers and parts suppliers, replacing thousands of manual processes every day. But IBM itself is coming under pressure from a range of cloud infrastructure providers including Amazon Web Services and Rackspace Hosting.
IBM has reportedly reduced its workforce in India by around 50,000 employees over the last three years. This is not just a sign of the fading of this sector as new technology changes the rules. India’s own Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is gaining market share and is now India’s biggest IT service firm. TCS is not only expanding in India it is also expanding globally. It now has over 275,000 staff, of whom 92% are Indian.
As technological changes accelerate, India is making efforts to keep abreast of those changes, while also offering old-school services that are a good fit for other countries.
About Graham Scott
Graham is an experienced editor and publisher and an award-winning writer. He has travelled extensively and is interested in world cultures.
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