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By Rajkamal Rao
Go back to Earning in India
For people who don’t wish to launch or run an existing business in India, successful returnees are those who can test-drive the India experience by asking their western employers for an expat assignment in India, or for a transfer to the India operations of the western enterprise on an Indian payroll.
US, European and Japanese companies are increasingly setting up their own subsidiaries in India. In 2009, there were over 100 Indian captives each with over 1,000 employees. During the next two years, captives experienced a compound annual growth of 11.6% with more than 200 new captives added. A Nasscom report from March 2011 said that captives employed over 440,000 employees, accounting for over 20% of the total exports’ employee base.
What factors are driving captive growth? Innovation is a key differentiator in an increasingly global economy (just look at the Apple/Samsung wars). Companies prefer to incubate and develop their own centers of excellence rather than transferring intellectual property to third party service providers. Second, companies are beginning to focus more on data privacy as governments force companies to step up data governance in the wake of increasing data theft. It’s easier to manage data when your Bangalore office is no different from the one in Phoenix. Third, vendor management of third party service providers is time consuming and expensive - it is not uncommon for buyers to negotiate for nearly a year to ink a 3-year IT service contract! There are no such contracts with your own captive.
Returnees can exploit these opportunities to seek higher-level positions with their Indian subsidiaries. They continue to work in the same overall environment and reach out to their western network as needed - while slowly transitioning to life in India. Once settled, returnees can investigate other India career moves by slowly disengaging with their employer, if necessary.
The most important benefit of taking this approach is that the returnee does not have to negotiate with the Human Resources team of an Indian company while still in the west. Indian HR teams are notorious for using metrics to pre-screen western candidates (e.g. how many people are you supervising?) although drawing conclusions from these responses may not be relevant at all. It is hard enough to negotiate an attractive job offer face to face - it is almost impossible to do so with hiring teams 10 time zones away.
At the other extreme, there are many examples of people who have returned to India with no job offer on hand but with a sense of confidence to leverage their India networks. These are the more courageous kind.
India represents the classic case of risk versus reward. Moving to India is almost certainly financially risky - because you will likely earn less than in the West for the same job you perform - but opportunities and a vibrant economy allow you to grow in both financial and intellectual terms. At some point, your growth could be sufficient enough to erase the income deficit in the west, aided by lower expenses in most categories (except housing), abundant cheap labor, and an overall superior standard of living.
Go back to Earning in India
For people who don’t wish to launch or run an existing business in India, successful returnees are those who can test-drive the India experience by asking their western employers for an expat assignment in India, or for a transfer to the India operations of the western enterprise on an Indian payroll.
US, European and Japanese companies are increasingly setting up their own subsidiaries in India. In 2009, there were over 100 Indian captives each with over 1,000 employees. During the next two years, captives experienced a compound annual growth of 11.6% with more than 200 new captives added. A Nasscom report from March 2011 said that captives employed over 440,000 employees, accounting for over 20% of the total exports’ employee base.
What factors are driving captive growth? Innovation is a key differentiator in an increasingly global economy (just look at the Apple/Samsung wars). Companies prefer to incubate and develop their own centers of excellence rather than transferring intellectual property to third party service providers. Second, companies are beginning to focus more on data privacy as governments force companies to step up data governance in the wake of increasing data theft. It’s easier to manage data when your Bangalore office is no different from the one in Phoenix. Third, vendor management of third party service providers is time consuming and expensive - it is not uncommon for buyers to negotiate for nearly a year to ink a 3-year IT service contract! There are no such contracts with your own captive.
Returnees can exploit these opportunities to seek higher-level positions with their Indian subsidiaries. They continue to work in the same overall environment and reach out to their western network as needed - while slowly transitioning to life in India. Once settled, returnees can investigate other India career moves by slowly disengaging with their employer, if necessary.
The most important benefit of taking this approach is that the returnee does not have to negotiate with the Human Resources team of an Indian company while still in the west. Indian HR teams are notorious for using metrics to pre-screen western candidates (e.g. how many people are you supervising?) although drawing conclusions from these responses may not be relevant at all. It is hard enough to negotiate an attractive job offer face to face - it is almost impossible to do so with hiring teams 10 time zones away.
At the other extreme, there are many examples of people who have returned to India with no job offer on hand but with a sense of confidence to leverage their India networks. These are the more courageous kind.
India represents the classic case of risk versus reward. Moving to India is almost certainly financially risky - because you will likely earn less than in the West for the same job you perform - but opportunities and a vibrant economy allow you to grow in both financial and intellectual terms. At some point, your growth could be sufficient enough to erase the income deficit in the west, aided by lower expenses in most categories (except housing), abundant cheap labor, and an overall superior standard of living.
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