US downturn slows outsourcing stars

India has built an innovative, fast-growing export industry in IT services, software and equipment thanks to a highly skilled, low-cost workforce. However, the US slowdown has hit share prices of Indian IT companies hard and executives fear it could damage their revenues. Others are more sanguine, pointing out that a newly chastened, cost-conscious IT industry in the US will find India’s value-for-money outsourcing proposition even more attractive.

       
Subramanian
Ramadorai

The internationally acclaimed management expert Sumantra Ghoshal told a rapt audience in a posh Mumbai hotel in early February that India had come a long way. In the decade after the dismantling of the licence raj – the maze of controls and licences that governed industry – a transformation had taken place. A straggly bunch of inward-looking, family-oriented Indian businessmen, who thrived on favour and protection, had given way to new capitalists from the information technology sector, offering globally-competitive services.

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