NASSCOM to shy away from terms like outsourcing, offshoring

Mittal argued that offshoring is also a business, noting for example that Nokia is designing products in India, which is also a market for the telecom company.

By PTI | May 20, 2010, 04.25 PM IST

BANGALORE: Gains from exports notwithstanding, India's IT industry lobby group NASSCOM is shying away from using terms such as " offshoring" and " outsourcing" in view of its apparent "negative connotations" in some of the mature markets such as the US.

"I think we have to remove 'offshoring' from our vocabulary", President of NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Services Companies), Som Mittal said.

He was responding to a question whether India should change strategy vis-a-vis 'desi' engineering and R&D services market, which is projected to become reach $40-45 billion by 2020, in a study released here today, as usage of term "outsourcing" has "hurt" India's software industry overseas.

Mittal argued that offshoring is also a business, noting for example that Nokia is designing products in India, which is also a market for the telecom company.

"These debates (on outsourcing) is in the mind", he observed.

President of Honeywell Technologies, Krishna Mikkilineni went a step further, saying even term 'services' should also be removed from the vocabulary, in addition to "offshoring" and "outsourcing".

"This is engineering (not need to add services)",he said. Another official also joined the don't-use-outsourcing brigade, saying his company is undertaking an engineering services work with the "core" being done in India and related systems in Indonesia and Germany.

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