A few years back, when I was young and footloose, unburdened by the great issues of the day (was it Oasis or Blur?)…back in 1999, to be precise, I was helping out Hewlett Packard ("HP") who found themselves with a serious problem. They'd been shipping computers into India, and when the Customs' folk opened up some sample crates, nineteen out of twenty contained fully assembled computers: one in twenty computer parts and peripherals. So, what's the big deal about that you may be, and probably are, asking…Well, the consignment was supposed to be all parts and peripherals because they were shipped into India's SEEPZ Zone duty-free, and fully assembled computers were most certainly not duty-free. Someone had bribed a customs officer to open the innocent one in twenty crates, but they hadn't bribed him enough, and in a naked act of vengeance, he crowbarred open the guilty crates and blew the whistle on HP. We managed to get them off with a hefty fine and a promise to behave themselves in future, but the story graphically illustrates just how far Indian Technology has come over the past twenty-five years…
First of all, since 2003, that single SEEPZ Zone (in Mumbai) has grown like a topsy, and as of last year, there were more than 270 of them scattered across the length and breadth of the Subcontinent. Secondly, since I was a lad, anti-corruption and compliance measures in India have become vastly more stringent and far more effective. Thirdly, perhaps most importantly, traffic in IT and BPO services has been more or less on the rise since 1999. Now it's going outwards to the rest of the World…
Over two short decades, the Subcontinent has evolved rapidly into the World's foremost technology hub (www2.deloitte.com/in), with its very own resident population of IT specialists and tech nerds working across the silicon belt from Mumbai through Puna and on to Chennai (from sea to shining sea in fact): so those western tech leviathans, like HP, are certainly now on their best behaviour. The original idea of SEEPZ (at least as far as IT technology was concerned) was to enable imports on favourable terms so that parts and peripherals could then be "imported" into India properly and then assembled and exported out. Nowadays, you're more likely to find India creating its own products from scratch and exporting them out clean, without any need to trouble customs officials wielding crowbars.
Locked and Loaded
As of 2023, some 70% of the World's technology headcount was based on the Subcontinent (www.ey.com/en_in/insights/india), so the likes of HP, as well as other western monoliths, have come to understand (soup to nuts) which side their bread's buttered on. India is currently one of the largest exporters of IT and BPO services on the Planet, employing more than 5 Million people, brimming over with talent, and locked and loaded to increase its global dominance over the years to come.
It all started back in 1967 when Tata Consultancy Services was founded in Mumbai, partnering initially with Burroughs and, from 1973, shipping out the burgeoning first wave of IT exports from (you've guessed it) the Mumbai SEEPZ Zone. By the 1980s, 80% of the nation's software exports were coming through SEEPZ, since when sectoral exports have grown by a startling 14% year on year: currently racing ahead at an eye-watering $193 Billion annually (www.statista.com): a figure you can expect to rise exponentially given, before the dampening effects of COVID lockdowns, the equivalent number was $254.5 Billion (according to EY).
Looking Out on the World
All of this means IT and BPO sectoral trends on the Subcontinent have turned outwards, too. In fact, we now hear that July's reduction in the UK base to 5% (www.bankofengland.co.uk) and an expected equivalent reduction in the US rate this week will further increase demand for Indian IT and BPO exports: cheaper access to capital, meaning European and US clients are likely to start ramping up ever larger and more sophisticated projects, from which Indian IT firms will be the main beneficiaries. No wonder Saurabh Gupta, President of Research and Advisory Services at HFS Research (www.hfsresearch.com), believes the Subcontinents' IT leaders are "confidently bullish"… he's absolutely right. We've certainly come a long way since 1999…
Red Ribbon Asset Management
India has been at the heart of Red Ribbon Asset Management (www.redribbon.co) for more than a decade, shaping its successful investment strategies through an unparalleled knowledge of the Subcontinent's markets, delivering higher than average investor returns, and looking after the Planet and People in the process.
Executive Overview
It's astonishing how much Indian IT and BPO Services have achieved over the past twenty-five years…and there's no reason to think they're slowing down any time soon.
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Red Ribbon Asset Management (www.redribbon.co) aims to harness the full potential of fast evolving and emerging technologies to meet the needs of global communities as part of a circular economy, fully recognising the compelling demands of planet people and profit.
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