Articles 11 to 20 of 35
Will Jobs Move Back to Silicon Valley from India? Don't Hold Your Breath...
As wages rise in cities like Bangalore and the Indian rupee appreciates against the U.S. dollar, a few Silicon Valley firms have begun to wind down their Indian operations and move jobs back to the U.S. Could this be the harbinger of the end of the offshoring boom to India? The Economic Times and India Knowledge@Wharton posed this question to IT executives, consultants and venture capitalists in the U.S. and India. Their answer: India still offers high-quality IT and engineering talent at a relative cost advantage. As such, offshoring to India is unlikely to go away anytime soon.
How Can Your Company Build an Excellent Supply Chain? Let Us Count the Ways...
Companies in almost every industry are turning to supply chain excellence as a critical aspect of competitive strategy. As a result, they are focusing on how to maximize the effectiveness of their supply chain networks to deliver business results. Executives from industries such as retail, manufacturing and IT services spoke about the ways they approach building agile supply chains at the recent Global Supply Chain Summit held at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad. India Knowledge@Wharton presents a round-up of their perspectives.
Mad About Mangoes: As Exports to the U.S. Resume, a Juicy Business Opportunity Ripens
Banned nearly two decades ago due to concerns over excessive pesticide use, Indian mangoes were recently allowed back into the U.S. market. Last month, the first shipments of Indian mangoes arrived on American soil after extensive negotiations on both sides and an agreement by India to irradiate all mango exports to the U.S. To celebrate, gala parties were thrown to herald the deal, among them an event at the Indian Consulate in New York City on June 7. But all the excitement aside, what does the reintroduction of the Indian mango to the U.S. mean for the various links in the supply chain? India Knowledge@Wharton spoke to people closely involved in the business to explore the issues behind the mango mania.
Koffee with Knowledge@Wharton: Karan Johar on the Globalization of Bollywood
Karan Johar, one of India's most successful young filmmakers, believes that Indian cinema was in the pits in the 1980s. Since the 1990s, however, younger filmmakers have come along with family-oriented films -- and these have been hugely successful in overseas markets. "Suddenly [Indian] films were opening in the U.K. Top Ten in the 1990s," he says. "When [my film] Kabhie Khushie Kabhie Ghum was released in 2001, it was at No. 3 after Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings." Johar, who hosts a popular TV talk show called "Koffee with Karan," notes that while Bollywood is indeed going global, it continues to struggle with distribution in North America. "It is the one big thing we need -- it is the one thing we haven't cracked," he says. Johar discussed these challenges and more with India Knowledge@Wharton during the Wharton India Economic Forum in Philadelphia.
Yes Bank's Rana Kapoor: 'We Look at Technology as the Bank's Center of Gravity'
Rana Kapoor often says that when he and a partner founded Yes Bank in Mumbai in 2003, it was the only private bank to be licensed by the Reserve Bank of India in 12 years. In the past three years, Yes Bank has seen rapid growth, spurred in part by what Kapoor says is its entrepreneurial culture. As a relatively new player in the field of Indian banking, how does Yes Bank intend to compete against much larger rivals? In an interview with India Knowledge@Wharton during the Wharton India Economic Forum in Philadelphia, Kapoor said that Yes Bank's strategy has several "late-entrant advantages," such as using technology creatively.
Post Haste: Why Pitney Bowes Wants to Automate India's Mailstream
How big is the mailbag of the world's most populous democracy? In a recent annual report, the Indian Department of Posts claims that its mail traffic was 8.6 billion pieces in 2003-04. In 2004-05, it says, that number dipped to 7.4 billion. Sound like a business in gradual decline? Not so, say executives at Pitney Bowes, the U.S.-based provider of mail management services, which has $5.5 billion in annual revenues and more than 35,000 employees worldwide. Two years ago Pitney Bowes took over its Indian distributor to set up shop in that country. How has its foray fared so far? India Knowledge@Wharton spoke with executives responsible for the India strategy to find out.
BPO Goes to Hollywood
As Hollywood increasingly turns to India, business process outsourcing (BPO) is making its way to the top of the credit lines. Indian firms have opportunities in at least three areas: animation, post production and local production support. A study by NASSCOM, a software industry association in India, predicts that Indian animation alone will grow to a $950 million business by 2009 from $285 million in 2005. Experts from Wharton and elsewhere describe the challenges facing the Indian film industry and what it will take to tackle them.
Offshore Outsourcing and the Relative Value of Growth: A Conversation with Katzenbach Partners
When the consulting firm Katzenbach Partners released a report recently describing a metric -- called the Relative Value of Growth (RVG) -- that purports to measure the strengths and capabilities of outsourcing firms, it caused a stir. Readers interpreted the study to have concluded that Indian IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) companies would soon overtake their Western counterparts. Wharton operations professor Ravi Aron spoke with the report's authors -- Nathaniel J. Mass, managing director of N.J. Mass Associates and Katzenbach senior fellow; Richard J. Schroth, CEO of Executive Insights and Katzenbach senior fellow; and Katzenbach engagement manager Roopa Unnikrishnan -- about the gap between the perception and the intention of their study.
Move Over, India: The Shifting Geography of Offshore Outsourcing Creates New Challengers
India took an early lead in establishing itself as a center for offshore outsourcing. Now, however, according to experts at Wharton and elsewhere, as many as 40 locations - including cities in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Latin America - are vying to attract BPO work. The next big phenomenon will be the emergence of a hub-and-spokes model in the globalization of services, says one Wharton professor.
How Should Companies Deal With Life After BPO?
Once a company has decided to move some jobs overseas as part of a business process outsourcing (BPO) arrangement, it faces two major challenges. The first involves dealing with the external partner - whether it is a third-party provider or a captive BPO center - to ensure that work performance does not suffer. And second, it must take effective steps to redistribute work among the employees left behind. Experts at Wharton and elsewhere - including the CEO of a company that has sent work offshore - offer lots of advice on both issues.
