Think Flat

A more fundamental question that comes to mind is, what does India currently have that is going "FOR" it, that the Chinese lack. Liberal policies towards foreign investment, rich availabilty of young blood who have a command over the english language etc are some of the most commonly quoted examples. Everyone is selling the India Inc story. The flip side of the coin is the Bad Infrastsucture, Bad Politics and whole lot of ther "BAD" issues that plaague the country and threaten to tarnish this image.

The Chinese too have a fair share of their own social, economic and political issues. They too have their niche areas of strength.

Now we rephrase the question to, "Who is going to wake up and smell the coffee? Who has the foresight and the leadership to acknowledge the current challenges, the gumption to take the necessary corrective measure to counter the threat of missing the bus and guide its nation to the next level?"

We have to wait and watch. For now, your guess is as good as mine.

I would pick India, but my question for you is whether India will have enough people to supply its own industry. If not, China should do well in getting the spillover.

Well,
More than think flat..it is a case of 'Think fat'.
You have purely taken up the current economic growth and size and have come up to the conclusion.
You have countered your agrument about India being the global IT hub by giving example of the silicon valley.
Would you not agree that 25 % of silicon valley is indians..and these days an increasing number of Indians prefer to stay back in India rather than go abroad

237 people? That's not enough for a survey - unless you have targeted CEOs, business decision makers and the like.

More interestingly, you quote Silicon Valley and Bangalore as examples of friendly ecosystems to Tech Entrepreneurship and IT professional hiring. (respectively) I'm not sure this has anything to do with an IT outsourcing ecosystem - the only plus for bangalore, and in fact, India, is it's cheaper and skilled engineer force which has been numbed by years of retrograde teaching techniques (learning by rote, low practical exposure etc.)

You need all three. You need skill, that's what makes you deliver. You need mind-numbness because such work involves long boring processes which aren't fun for the technically passionate individual. And you need cheap, or there will be too many questions.

China has all three, in perhaps as much abundance as India. They only need to get their act together; English skills is their only drawback. In fourteen years, they can bridge that gap, and they already have years of mind-numbness from communism. How can India match their infrastructure?

As for Bangalore within India - ask around in the city about the new commercial "software parks" and whether they're able to get tenants? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.

Good to see Infosys joining the blog bandwagon. It would be nice to see a post about what prompted this decision and what do you expect out of this exercise.

Richa,
How do you define the 'ecosystem' considering the fact that Infosys operates from more than 9 cities in India, not only Bangalore? Do you think all those cities have comparable 'ecosystem'? Does Infosys face issues in operating from those cities?

Other than the horrible traffic, what are the other parameters of the 'ecosystem' you see in Bangalore?

Why do you think China cannot have a better 'ecosystem' comparing to India, other than the English language knowledge?

Dr. Edwards Deming (American Statistician) said, "In God we trust, all others bring data." Please substantiate your points with data.

Regarding the Poll, I guess you are referring to the web poll in InNews. This is not a statistical sample survey because the recipients of the newsletter are not only executives of companies. This is a plain web poll.

I'm active on the hardware outsourcing side, not software or services. I wonder though, if China's huge advantage over India as a hardware manufacturing center is being or will be leveraged to take over functions like call center customer support. If the knowledge base that comes from making a laptop or handset resides in the heads of the people who do the design and manufacturing in China, wouldn't it be cheaper for deploy support from there?

The diff between Infosys and China is Info is linearly scalable at all points (with no diminishing returns).English, engineers,coding skills etc

I understand that TCS and the likes are carrying spill over demand into dev centers in China (staffed by chinese)and sometimes for the China market. It is competitive advantage at its best.

Use workers where marginal revenue productivity is highest viz Indian workers in India,(or US) for western markets. Use Chinese workers where their MRP would be highets viz serving their own markets and adjacent markets.

@China Law Blog,

You are right -- there are many considerations for 'predicting' the future of an industry, and power is a big one. However, the power requirements of software industry would be much smaller than manufacturing.

Plus, as companies become increasingly globally integrated, they will use the local skillsets and resources as appropriate. So the question of China vs. India becomes: What will be the areas of specialization for China and for India (a) as global hubs and (b) for local operations?

India may be today's hot IT outsourcing destination, but China may well catch up with India as the world leader in IT offshoring services soon.

India will stay ahead of China because of the language barrier. Indians speak good English, Chinese don't. Not yet anway. If China focuses on developing the English language then China can give India a run for it's money.

I want to see how India and China compete for outsourcing in the Hispanic world. I am writing this from Santiago, Chile.

Sanjay

Who will overtake this business depends on who is going to be cheaper and more competitive. I think China had edge because of their serious focus on IT trained manpower, English speaking professionals and infrasturcture development will leave India behind in next 15 years.
However, India can sustain in this business by empowering, educating & skilling rural manpower and bridging digital divide. India's future success relies on improvements in the domestic economy.

China.....I believe it will take atleast one and half generation more for them to come up with English as second mother language. Not only the laguage barrier but India has also advantage of Domain Expertise. I guess upto 2040 India will dominate, then further competition might arose......

China is not going to compete with India in IT outsourcing.

China's goal is to challenge U.S in hardware and software design.

China's dragon chip II was released several months ago and it is only 2-3 years behind INTEL/AMD

Primary level education needs a change, social ethics needs a change to achieve excellence.

>> 237 IT and business professionals
Were they all Indians :).

>> Silicon Valley
When will we stop following US' Silicon valley needs, rich people and nerds. We are producing people now but what about nerds? Think of creating nerds in Kolkata and you will get a silicon valley there. It is the right people that makes silicon valleys. Create better universities (also the primary schools).

Infosys and the other rich Indian companies should come together and design a better primary education system for few 10,000 every year. Things will change this way only.

India learnt and excelled in the English language as a concomitant of the Industrial revolution during the British rule over the past 200 years.

China will compress this time of English learning in less than 20 years, under the IT revolution, owing to their ability to integrate various resources in their chosen and determined way, as per the empirical evidence, after the Chinese cultural revolution and Tiananmen Square since 1979.

The Chinese IT industry is larger than India if you combine domestic and outsourcing together. According to the latest 2007 7th China international software EXPO, the Chinese software industry reached 480 billion yuan (http://tech.sina.com.cn/it/2007-06-14/13291563198.shtml)

India may and probably will remain the leader for outsourcing, but China is growing fast, and their professionals are learning from the inside of the biggest computer companies like IBM and HP. These and many large computer companies like them claim cost cutting, and diversity as the reasons.

With India and China growing so fast in the market, the day is coming when the only real computer source in America will be Silicon Valley, while the rest of America will be the real loser. Eventually, the control of the industry these companies started and created so many years ago will be gone. Outsourcing technical jobs destroys the very framework of the U.S. economy. Imagine when India and China figure out they can leverage their sources against the parents that spawned them. All chicks one day leave the nest...so to will these vulture chicks...

In a few years time about five to 10 per cent of US and European software outsourcing will be diverted from India to China.
A recent survey shows that in the mid-1990s, only 15 per cent of China's software companies were under contract to foreign companies to provide outsourced software, but in 2005 the figure had climbed to 40 per cent.
The global service outsourcing market is worth between 300 billion and 500 billion dollars. Business insiders have predicted the market will reach one trillion dollars in 2008 with an annual growth of 7.9 per cent.

I'll go for india! "the unstoppable tech in india". Maybe china will surpass india not in 2020 but maybe in 2030. Not sure:)

If English language is a barrier for China, another reason is
IT outsourcing firms in india are supported by its government,,,, that's why IT outsourcing to india has doubled every year and not only UK and US who outsource to them but almost all first world countries.

Anywhere on the internet now, you have nothing else to see in the number one spot in terms of IT outsourcing but only india.

Some of my clients site example of huge cost saving while getting work done in China. what do you think India's advantages are right now over China in software?