Skip to main content

Offshoring to India

I was reading a post by Steve McConnell on his blog How to Scale Up Quickly and he commented

Trying to startup quickly by outsourcing is a dead end as far as I'm concerned, especially to India where turnover is so high. Offshore captives can work, but minimum workable size seems to be about 100 people, and it probably takes 2-3 years of ramp up to get to financial break even.

There are some points here that I agree with and some that I don't.

I agree with the fact that there is high turnover is true in a lot of organizations and yes it does effect a lot of projects. An industry average of 15-20% attrition is quite startling for the west to grapple with. Making a project succeed with this kind of turnover is also hard. Searching in Google will give you enough proof to substantiate this high figure. In order to complete a project it is important to have a consistent team right through the project.

I do not agree with the fact that you need a minimum workable size of about 100 people, and it probably takes 2-3 years of ramp up to get to financial break even if one wants to go offshore. If you have a clear idea of what you want to use the offshore center for with clear and precise requirements and you work with a company with enough experience in handling offshore projects you can get a lot of stuff done at a very reasonable cost. If you are planning to move anything offshore setting up a captive unit is not the way forward. There are a lot of small and big players that will do services based work. It is good to go this route and I have seen a lot of small projects needing 2 - 10 people succeed.
Labels:

Comments

sra said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
3:02 PM, March 24, 2008
sra said…
Sudeep, thanks for adding me to your network. Is there an e-mail ID where I can reach you? I know you and your folks from our school days, quite thrilled to re-discover your through the Net.
3:06 PM, March 24, 2008
Makarand said…
Happy to be a part of your IndiBlogger network. My experience with this matter is that it is better to think global development rather than just offshore development when someone is just venturing into an outsourcing relationship. In product development, where most of my personal experience has been, it helps to have two components to the team -- one close to the customer and the other remote. This is not a new model but you will be surprised with how many small and mid-size companies try to develop brand new products in a purely offshore mode, which I believe introduces a disconnect into the process that makes it difficult early on.
9:16 PM, March 24, 2008
Anonymous said…
Commendable effort!
9:39 PM, March 26, 2008
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Online Encumbrance Certificate in Andhra Pradesh

You can get an encumbrance certificate online in AP now. In order to get it you have to perform the following steps. Go to the website http://igrs.ap.gov.in/ Click on Citizen Services -> encumbrance -> Search Click on Yes in the screen that appears Fill in the entries that appear in the search screen. You will have to get quite a few details in so it will help to have a copy of the registration document available with you. Once you finish entering all the details click on Submit. It will then go to a new page with the list of items that matched the search displayed. Click on the check box of the list of encumbrance certificates that are needed and click on submit. This will open a new popup window with the encumbrance certificate. You can then print this certificate. What is this useful for Anyone buying new property can go and verify the current owners of the property that is shown on this certificate in the column Name of PartiesExecutant(EX)&Claimants(CL) with the copy of
92 comments
Read more

Cricket Grounds in Hyderabad

This is a repost of the article I published on the 10th of Jan, 2008 as I have added a new ground - Lahari Resorts. View Larger Map In this post I will try and update the list of cricket grounds that i know in Hyderabad. The grounds that I have listed till now are MCH Play ground, Ameerpet Francis (Do not have the contact number but go to the ground and ask for him). The charges are Rs. 1100 for the ground. They do not charge for anything more. You get the ground from 9:00 AM to 4:00PM. The ground is small. Welfare Center, Sanath Nagar Dhanraj Babu (+91 9394556356). The charges are Rs. 1100 for the ground. They charge you an additional Rs. 500 for the mat and Rs. 100 for cleaning and drawing lines and stuff. They are supposed to give you the ground from 9:00 AM to 4:00PM but what they do is that they pocket extra money from another team wanting to play and give the ground out to them for the remainder of the day assuming that you won't play for the whole day. So what happened th
86 comments
Read more

Problogger guest post

Today my guest post appeared on problogger.net . I wrote about 9 Tips to Start Blogging Successfully . Let me give you a bit of a background about where this article originated from. I have been blogging for close to 3 years now but I have been doing it seriously only for the last 2 months. I then analysed what were the things that I should have done in order to have become a successful blogger based on what I have noticed on the ones that have become successful. The final analysis of my study is what I put into that article and it is what I am trying to implement since the last 2 months. Reading the comments it was exhilarating to notice that some of the readers actually thought Darren was writing the post :-). It was also nice to notice that many readers agreed with my analysis and that strengthened my belief that what I have written if followed will work. How did I get to do a guest post on problogger.net ? A little more than a week ago Darren invited bloggers to do guest pos
14 comments
Read more