The sari-clad graphics designer knows nothing about American football. But there she was, putting the finishing touches on an automobile dealership ad tied to the kickoff of the NFL season for a New York newspaper.
She is Vijayalakshmi, and is the face of the new global worker. She and her colleagues at 2AdPro Media Solutions, a two-year-old start-up, create ads for scores of U.S. newspapers at assembly-line speed in this steamy, sun-beaten coastal city that aims to be a global publishing hub.
Across India, a new, sophisticated outsourcing industry is emerging, one that requires skills well beyond those needed for traditional call-centers. And it extends well beyond publishing work. "Anything that can be outsourced is being outsourced today in India," said Rajdeep Sahrawat, vice president of Nasscom, or the National Association of Software Service Companies, an Indian software industry trade organization that closely monitors trends in outsourcing.
It is said virtually any job that uses a computer could be outsourced. Internet increasingly enables near-seamless outsourcing of professional work to India, China, Eastern Europe and other regions, putting more and more high-paying American jobs at risk.
Thsse countries have large and rapidly growing pools of talented people. Whatever its ultimate impact, this next-generation of offshore work — some call it KPO for "knowledge process outsourcing” — is drawing business from across professional sectors in the United States.
Most Americans are not even aware of the type of high-end work being done in India — tax filing preparations, medical diagnoses, legal work, financial portfolio analysis.
The types of services being offered here are mind-boggling. While these highly skilled professionals currently represent only a thin slice of India’s 2 million tech and business outsourcing workers, their ranks are growing rapidly, industry experts say.
Nasscom’s Sahrawat said the category is too recent for his organization to track. Many firms have been approached by Silicon Valley companies that want to outsource their marketing work, believe this new type of outsourcing will eventually grow to a multibillion-dollar industry.
"There is a talent pool in India beyond engineering," said Vani Kola, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who is managing director of Santa Clara-based NEA-IndoUS Ventures, which invests in high-end outsourcing companies in India.
"And this talent pool has never been tapped." Increasingly, Western companies must turn to countries like India, where 50 percent of the population is under 25, added Kola, now based in Bangalore.
"The world’s workforce will come from these countries because they have the masses. They are going to fill the gaps. Knowledge process outsourcing will change the role Indians play in the global economy."
One company Kola backs is PreMedia Global, a start-up that provides research, writing and editing services to publishers of U.S. textbooks. In two-and-a-half-years, PreMedia has grown from a brother-and-sister operation to a company with 900 employees, 600 of whom are based in Chennai – "High-end, knowledge-based services — that’s where the growth is coming from."
Viswanathan and his sister lined up clients that produce textbooks for schools across the United States, including California. "A publisher gives us the detail of the content — what they submitted to each state — and says, ‘You guys develop this into a book," he said. "It could be math, it could be science, it could be reading."
While debate continues over just which American jobs may be vulnerable to outsourcing, most people acknowledge that the new global economic order is forcing Americans to reposition their careers.
"People have to understand how jobs are changing and start re-inventing themselves,” he said. "No one will be able to stop this now."
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