Outsourcing a bad word in Nasscom's vocabulary

Indian 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 mature markets such as the US.

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

He was responding to a question whether India should change its strategy vis-a-vis the 'desi' engineering and R&D services market, which is projected to touch $40-45 billion by 2020 in a study released here today. He said the usage of the 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.

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

"This is engineering... No need to add services," he said.

Another official also joined the don't-use-outsourcing brigade, saying his company is undertaking an engineering services project, with the "core" being done in India and related systems in Indonesia and Germany.