Indian IT - Is it becoming less competitive in the global market...?

India and it's IT industry has been the major beneficiaries of the IT outsourcing that happened in the past few years. Lower cost and abundant availability of english speaking technical talent were the biggest plus points for India.

But, are we losing that advantage to countries like China..?

The biggest disadvantage which China had in the past was the lack of enough english speaking talent, and the lack of control over piracy and intellectual property violations. But they are around 50% cheaper than their Indian counterparts. And Chinese government seem to be acting on getting the talent pool and getting their act together in controlling piracy. That seems to be good enough reason for majority of the major players in the IT industry. And China has been doing PR campaign in a large scale to boost their IT industry.

So, you can see that in the next five to ten years, India can lose its competitive advantage over China, w.r.t outsourcing.

What is India's answer to these challenges..? Cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai & Chennai are becoming costlier every day. One answer is in developing other cheaper alternatives to these expensive cities.

We, as Keralites, should look at the development of Smart City as an answer to this challenge. This can in addition to help generate the jobs that is crucial for the states development, will also provide an alternative to the big cities because it can provide the cost advantage compared to them.