India's outsourcing valued at $60 billion by 2010 growing at over 25 percent a year

India's software and services exports were $17.2 billion in the fiscal year ended March 31 this year, up by 34.5 percent from the previous year
India contributes 28 per cent to the total talent pool of knowledge workers in the world. This has helped it corner 65 per cent of the information technology business and 46 per cent of the ITES market.

But the greatest challenge staring the software services exports in the face is skill shortage. The country will face a shortage of 500,000 knowledge workers by 2010. The IT services sector will need 150,000 employees while the BPO sector will need 350,000 trained personnel.According to the Mckinsey report 2005, "The country will need 2.3 million professionals to meet the $60 billion export revenue target by then. But the present education system will be able to churn out only 7,00,000. Besides 2.3 Million, it will provide indirect employment to another 6.5 million workers

Urban infrastructure in India also needs to be improved as offshoring companies deal with various bottlenecks, Sinha said. Further growth of the industry will have to come from entirely new business districts outside the first- and second-tier cities, said Jayant Sinha, partner at McKinsey & Co.The report proposes setting 10 or 12 integrated townships in India with associated infrastructure like roads and international airports

A large number of multinational technology and user companies are stepping up outsourcing to India.: Microsoft Corp. announced last week that it was increasing staff in India from 4,000 to 7,000 over the next three to four years, Dell Inc. said in April that it was increasing staff in the country to 10,000 by the end of this year & Aviva PLC, its suppliers were increasing staff doing work for Aviva from 4,300 to 7,800 over the next two years in India and Sri Lanka are just some of them.India's IT leaders Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Technologies and Wipro are scaling up their recruitment to about 1,000 young people a month.

Source: 1, 2Prashanth RaiTag(s):India, IT+Services