India IT workForce

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/infotech/ites/IBM-is-Indias-second-largest-pvt-sector-employer/articleshow/6327859.cms

IBM is India's second largest pvt sector employer

Some said that IBM Daksh (the BPO unit) alone employs about 50,000 people in India. IBM Global Services --- which straddles hardware (telecom, retail billing, mainframe, servers, etc) and software sales, services and support business, consulting business --- and IBM Labs are together seen to employ another 70,000 to 80,000 people.

BANGALORE: Tata Consultancy Services is the largest private sector employer in the country. It had 1,63,700 employees as on June 30. But guess who's number 2?

The honour goes to -- surprise, surprise -- IBM. That's right. Not to any Tata or Ambani company, or to Infosys or Wipro.

The fact that IBM has over one lakh people on its rolls in this country is one of India Inc's best-kept secrets. No one in US-headquartered IBM will admit that it employs such a large number of people in India -- for fear of a backlash at home. There's been rising anger in the US over the transfer of `American jobs' to lower cost havens, particularly India. Faced with an economic slowdown and a politically-damaging high employement rate, Barack Obama himself has begun to sound jingoistic. He has issued barely-veiled threats against US companies that ship out work and promised candies to those who stay patriotic.

Even as an IBM spokesperson declined comment when contacted, a source within the company said that in a couple of years, the India employee strength could cross that in the US, where it employs about 1,55,000 people, and where the pace of hiring is substantially slower than in India. IBM globally has a little over 4,00,000 employees. So, close to 1 in 3 of its employees is already an Indian.

Its staff strength is more than four times that of India's biggest private sector company, Reliance Industries, which employs about 23,000 people. It is bigger than the combined employee base of the two Tata Group's crown jewels, Tata Steel (81,000) and Tata Motors (24,000).

A cross-section of industry analysts and manpower recruitment firms TOI spoke with not only put IBM's India workforce (including that of its wholly-owned subsidiary IBM Daksh) at over one lakh, some even went to the extent of saying it might be 1.3 lakh -- well over Infosys' 1.14 lakh as on June 30. Infosys is India's second largest IT firm by revenue and third, it now transpires, by employees.

Since 2007, the company has stopped disclosing the geographic break-up of its employee numbers. The last time it provided figures was in 2007, when it said it had 73,000 employees in India. Since then, the company has maintained that it's a global company and geographic numbers do not have any meaning in that context.

IT services firms have emerged as India's biggest job generators, even as traditional manufacturing firms -- historically big employers -- have tended to cut down on numbers to control costs. Typically, this sector also generates high paying, high disposable income jobs, unlike manufacturing.

It's well known that IBM has been hiring aggressively in India. The 2007 figure of 73,000 was a near 40% increase over the 2006 figure of 53,000. Since then, big IT companies have been hiring upwards of 20,000 people a year.

"Even during the recession years of 2008/2009, it was mostly IBM, along with Accenture, that kept the lights on in the hiring market," says a headhunter. In an environment where the pressure to cut/control cost is brutal, hiring people at relatively higher salaries has become a luxury few can afford.

India has over 550 million people below the age of 25 years

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asr: see the potential if you can tap and train this huge youth, skilled work force and at world cheaper prices
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According to the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry
(FICCI), India's demographic profile, with over 550 million people below the
age of 25 years, offers a sharp contrast to the labour constraint already
being faced by developed countries.

Member States like India and Iran (with 70% of its population under the age
of 30 years) are considered young countries, with a youthful population and
an attractive pool of skilled labour. There exists a huge potential for this
young and skilled labour to power the industry in more well developed member
States like Singapore and Australia.

Tremendous opportunities therefore exist for companies from Australia,
Singapore and Malaysia to invest in the tourism, infrastructure, and
engineering sectors in our least developed, as well as developing Member
States.
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- this article by SamPitroda
I see hope in India mainly because 550 million are below the age of 25. In most places the population is ageing or decreasing. India is going to be a source of major global workforce.

The history of mankind is at a major transitional point. Everything we are doing today is a paradigm of the 19th or early 20th century. Take education or transportation. Who decided that it should take four years to get a degree? Somebody decided 200 years back and we are continuing it. Today, when you think of education you think of duster, chalk, blackboard, teacher, grades, exams or classroom. Technology has changed the learning models.

Today ask anybody how to open a bank account and you will know these kinds of processes were based on a 19th century mindset. What is the role of money, the role of World Bank, the role of IMF? All these decisions that were made after World War don't make any sense anymore.

Internet has changed everything, business models, access... everything in our lives is changing and different. Any local event becomes global instantly. All these have a far-reaching impact and we will have to restructure our institutions.

Today, health and education are expensive and not easily accessible.
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China Close To Becoming World’s Largest Internet Market By Users

he state-owned China Internet Network Information Center said that China’s total number of Internet users
- rose 53% to 210 million at the end of 2007
- up from 137 million at the end of 2006 and
- 162 million in June 2007.

According to the WSJ, China is now just five million users shy of surpassing the United States as the world’s largest Internet market

asr: see user comments which portrays:

4# Norman
Internet in China is completely different from here at the united states. In the US, internet becomes the backbone of business. It is essential tool for shopping, traveling, marketing and entertainment in additional to news and media. But in China, the internet is pretty much used for games, news and entertainments: video and music. Although the number of users is huge, most of users are playing internet games online. Yes, there are a lot of users who spend a lot of time on line. But the business value of the internet is low.
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45# lyy9981
As a Chinese living in Canada, I agree with posting #4 of Norman: the business value of Chinese internet is very low.

I did an experiment last year. I set up a Chinese website with Google AdWords. The website got hundreds visits in China every day, but Google AdWords didn’t record even one cent! In the same period, my another English website, which has only 30-60 visits per day, can generate $.30 - $1.00 dollar daily. Realizing how little value Chinese market was, I closed the website after one week.

This experiments taught me how tough Chinese internet market is. And for anyone who doesn’t speak Chinese and need to hire translators or programmers, the risk is even higher.

Also, don’t expect any original ideas would succeed in China. Because big Chinese websites can easily copy your ideas and promote their own clones with their huge networks and resources. Examples: Chinese version of Youtube （www.tudou.com） and Facebook （www.xiaonei.com）. Other examples: Yahoo China failed in China; and Baidu beats Google as China’s #1 search engine.

To sum up, Chinese internet has low value. If you don’t have much cash to burn, don’t go there.


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48# Norman
Post #45 got to the point! Thanks.

Just forget to mention that I post a very best book I have ever read on how to apply colleges in one of the most popular chinese website in US. There are over 3000 clicks in two days of the post since Chinese parents care about their children’s education very much. The book is linked to my amazon associate which is has 40% discount of retailed price. I am so surprised that not even one person bought the book! Not only in China, even Chinese website here has traffic no business value.

China behind India in software, says Murthy

http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/jun/11murthy.htm
China was far behind India in the software sector and India should focus its efforts towards leveraging this lead in forging ahead in the global market, Chairman and Chief Mentor of Infosys [Get Quote] Narayana Murthy said.

Addressing a group of 125 interns at the the Infosys global internship programme in Bangalore on Monday, he said China had done the best job in the world in manufacturing.

However, it was far behind India in the area of IT softwares. "India has had a lead of 20 years over China," he said, explaining the reasons.

Moreover, India attracted the middle class professionals, who worked hard, understood customers and operations better and are fairly smart. India also developed a fairly advanced system, processing and methodology for distribution development model, he said, adding Indian companies also took to quality in a big way.

However, Indian companies, he said, should not underestimate China which was an "extraordinary nation and if it decided to put its soul into something it did it well."

China also had an excellent education system which it has been successfully focusing on, an example that could be emulated by other nations as well, he said.

Replying to a question posed by an intern on Infosys serving the Chinese market, he said Infosys currently was working with multinationals in China in phase one. In phase two, it would work with local Chinese company.

Every major player had 'serious' operations in China, which was a very important market and is growing. It had a two trillion plus dollar economy ( asr: read stock Market capitalization vs. India 1 trillion) with $950 billion exports. ( asr: wow half of chiana's stock Market cap is exports ).

BPO: India far ahead of China - Forrester

BPO: India far ahead of China
- Despite significant government support and huge level of visibility on the global arena, China's offshore market has not taken off as expected and still has a long way to become a potential alternative to India, technology research firm Forrester said in a report.
- Noting that China's percentage of overall offshore resources has dropped and other countries were growing at a faster pace, Forrester said the country needs to refocus its offshore efforts. Instead of trying to compete in areas like application development and management, where India clearly dominates, China should encourage its local firms to focus on other areas like testing, data management and product development services.
- "Their education programmes ought to focus on advanced skills like project management and advanced architecture skills, while at the same time, respective governments should invest significant funds to market the country as an alternative to the offshore incumbent India," McCarthy said.

China Shakes the World: A Titan's Rise and Troubled Future

China Shakes the World: A Titan's Rise and Troubled Future -- and the Challenge for America
- It won the Financial Times 2006 Business Book of the Year for a reason.

- James Kynge (author) Financial Times bureau chief in Beijing, discusses not only the challenges faced by America in this excellent new book, but those faced by China itself. One of these challenges is the enormous demographic and economic growth that China has experienced in the last 20 years.
- Today there are 40 cities with populations of over a million and another 53 with populations between 500,000 and a million.
- The city of Chongking is growing by about 300,000 a year.
- In 2005, 400 million people were urban and by 2050 another 600 to 700 million will be urbanized. The accompanying challenge is sustaining the 10% annual economic rate to support this population surge

- China's growing size and influence will be one of the greatest challenges faced by the US and the rest of the world in the new century. In what Kynge calls the "compression of developmental time," Chinese workers are using the latest high-tech manufacturing technology and the most modern infrastructure, yet the average industial wage is only about $.50 an hour. Neither the West nor other countries can compete with this combination. How long this can be sustained is an open question. Kynge points out that they have an unbeatable advantage at the moment but that it cannot last.

- China a major and growing importer of natural resources and driving up global commodity prices. With their growing appetite for raw materials such as lumber, many of the world's rainforests in Indonesia, Myanmar, Central Africa, and Brazil are being logged - illegaly - to be sold in China. An area of rainforest about the size of Belgium disappears every year. Kynge's anecdote about missing manhole covers in surrounding countries illustrates the demand for steel. And no one should be surprised that the recent increase in global oil prices is a result of Chinese demand.

India, China powerhouses of innovation

Leading IT analyst Gartner on Monday said organisations operating in "constrained environments" in emerging nations such as India and China are innovating at a faster rate than ever before.
- Gartner predicts that mobile phones will outnumber PCs by a factor of 15:1 in developing markets by 2010.
- Thirdly, emerging countries such as China and India have the ambition to lead the IT industry in the global market, and innovation is their only way to compete globally", it said.
- Another example, according to Gartner, is mobile banking. SMS money transfer was first introduced in emerging markets because it was not otherwise cost effective to reach people in remote areas.
- India also appears on the way to becoming an IT services powerhouse with the help of established leading Indian IT companies such as Wipro, Infosys and Tata Consulting Services.
- IT services account for around half of India's services exports and the IT services market is growing at more than 30 per cent per year," he said.

- According to Shen, "85 per cent of the world's population reside in emerging markets. Although today their populations have lower purchasing power with many living under the $1 poverty line, the aggregation of their purchasing power in the next decade could pass that of developed markets.

-In fact, the populations of China and India are moving from below poverty line, creating a whole new consumer population of equivalent size to the European middle-class in purchasing power parity terms

In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India

In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India

- India graduates over 1 million engineers every year, as opposed to the US and Europe who graduate about 200,000 between the two of them.

- India now ranks third in scientific capacity behind Japan and the US. Yet India's literacy rate is only 65%, whereas China's is 90%. This is explained, according to Luce, by the fact that India remains a very poor and rural country. About 750 million people live in some 680 thousand villages, and about 300 million of them in extreme poverty. There are chronic shortages of land and water making subsistence a daily struggle - under these circumstances education is not even a consideration.

- In another comparison to China, Luce notes that India only has 7 million people involved in manufacturing, whereas China has 100 million. Labor laws in India - some remnants of Nehru-Gandhi socialism - make it difficult for employers to lay-off workers. Therefore many factory owners have invested heavily in high-tech, minimizing the need for manual labor. If anything good can be said about the Communist party in China it is that they have done away with such laws making hiring and firing much easier. This may sound unjust to some but it employs an additonal 93 million workers.

- Luce also points out that India has basically bypassed the industrial revolution, going directly from agriculture to high-tech services. This shows that they invested heavily in higher education for the elite while neglecting the poor. The result is having a middle class about the size of France or Germany and at the same time having an underclass of about 900 million. That there is not enough money for universal education is not surprising since only about 35 million in a population of 1.1 billion pay taxes.

- In 2006, India completed a 3,000 mile interstate highway called the "Golden Quadrilateral" running from New Dehli to Mumbai to Chennai to Kolkata and back to New Delhi. It was a remarkable feat since many of the politicians sitting in the ruling coalition would try to prevent its completion because the highway disrupted many of their constituents' communities. All of it was settled, however, through bribes and the legal system. In China this kind of development is done by decree. In many ways the Chinese system is more efficient but no one would vote for its authoritarian tactics.

- India like China still has many serious problems to tackle, among them energy, environment, poverty, and public health. The fact that they have a democracy is a plus in a country divided by many languages, religion, and caste. On the downside they have a huge bureaucracy that is corrupt and resistant to change. Yet India seems to work, moving slowly toward economic development and great power status inspite of the gods.