fareastreview-onoffshoring-032005.doc.docVIP

/articles1/2005/0503/free/p019.html Far Eastern Economic Review March 2005 The Next Wave Of Offshoring By Robyn Meredith As Sumer Shankardass is driven through Bombay, barefoot beggars tap on his car windows at stoplights, asking for money, but the 36-year-old Indian entrepreneur ignores them. He is concentrating. A press release issued in London has caused his cell phone to beep half a world away. He glances at the text message on his phone and breaks into a victorious grin. He leans over to tell the others in the car the good news: Norwich Union, the large British insurance company, is laying off 900 people in the United Kingdom. Mr. Shankardass knows these jobs - and 3,000 others which were subsequently earmarked by Norwich for offshoring - are headed for India. That can only mean good news for wns Global Services, the Indian outsourcing company where he works as a senior vice president. In 2004, his was one of three India-based companies awarded outsourcing contracts by Norwichs parent company, Aviva. On the other side of Asia, in a new Shanghai technology park that is home to scores of Chinese and foreign tech companies, Jun Qian, 29, is tapping away at his keyboard, seemingly oblivious to the China where his parents grew up - a place where an education wasnt allowed, where prosperity could get you killed. Told that American managers like him earn 10 times as much, he shrugs. Even if he were given the chance to move to America, he says hed stay in China. Im focusing on the future, he says. We have a lot more opportunities here. Around the world, a quiet revolution is taking place. It wasnt planned, it isnt political. But it is steadily marching, some might say leaping along, and - even if we wanted to - it cant be stopped. The revolutions name is offshoring, and while the concept is not new - manufacturing jobs have been moved to countries such as China and Mexico for years - what is different of late is the huge