Vantage point




Monday, December 11, 2006

The Daily SomeAchaar - Panic Grips Indian Software Industry

by our general correspondent
Bangalore - The Indian software industry is in throes of panic, fearing the impending Chinese domination. The industry expects that China will rapidly become the most preferred destination for offshoring software products, and lead to Indian companies suffering heavy losses and force mass layoffs.

While there have been murmurs about China gradually catching up in software, the possibility started seeming all too real after the Indian hockey team failed to qualify for the semi-finals in the Doha Asian Games, after a surprise loss to China.

"We know that the China is better at us at foreign trade and sports. But at least in software and hockey, we have held an edge over them. But now they have beaten us even in hockey. Is software safe any more?", opined an Infoscion, on the condition of anonymity.

The hockey team's failure in Doha has taken by surprise even Fudginder Singh, Chief Analyst at the "Sports and Software Research Institute" in New Delhi. "Using past data of several socio-economic indicators, we had built models to predict when China would nudge ahead of India in hockey. According to those models, the said event was expected to happen in 2018. However, it has happened in 2006. Many of the same indicators were also used for models to predict the growth of the software industry. The loss at Doha has shown that the parameters in our models were horribly wrong, and indeed, the software industry should start taking the Chinese threat seriously."

Even as most software professionals are sweating buckets at this impending doom, some have enrolled for Mandarin classes. A young software professional was asking this professional about the immigration policy of China concerning software professionals.

It remains to be seen whether it is a matter of days or weeks before Chinese software exports exceed India's.