The death of Indian IT services?
Vivek Wadhwa, a prominent former technology entrepreneur, vice president of Innovation and Research at Singularity University, a Stanford University Fellow, and big-picture thinker of all things tech, recently wrote about a hugely disruptive trend taking place in the technology arena that has massive ramifications for Indian IT.
His basic point is that while Indian outsourcers have not "become less capable of servicing Western needs... It is that their customer base — the CIO and IT department — is in decline". Wadhwa points out that customers of Indian IT today are easily able to "download cheap, elegant, and powerful apps on their iPads that make their corporate systems look primitive... They are user customizable and can be built by anyone with basic programming skills".
This is a trend that I also wrote about in a recent article for ZDNet by focusing on two companies — a "new economy" Indian company like Snapdeal (offering "daily deals") as well as Bajaj FinServ, which is straddling the age-old industry of auto loans.