BANGALORE, INDIA: Ever since the American Presidential elections began, lots of speculations on the future of Indian outsource industry have been doing rounds.

Back home IT industry honchos are cracking their heads to find a solution to overcome Barrack Obama's anti-outsourcing intentions, which could otherwise end India's golden era of outsourcing killing the golden goose much prior to its maturity.

Now, with the financial crisis taking a severe toll for the past sometime, paving way for global depression, will it beat the last nail on the coffin?

Sivakumar Thiyagarajan, president and general manager, managed services, e4e Busiess Solutions, says: "US will not go to the extent of laying tariffs and tax for people who outsource because companies today have become global in nature. It is very clear that American companies like Ford and GE generate lot of revenue in India, so if they are doing a share of business in India it can’t be termed as offshoring."

"It is certain that the outsourcing industry will see a downfall as the American economy has crashed. At the same time the financial crisis or Barrack Obama's words will not have an immediate effect on Indian IT/BPO industry. This downturn on the contrary will engineer an influx of business to India," Thiyagarajan avers.

Further, in the wake of the recent US meltdown, companies are realigning their global strategies and looking out for alternative markets. Of lately European companies have been showing an increasing interest in India. Though Europe started offshoring in the nineties, India still hasn’t come into its radars for various reasons. The latest Zinnov study says that 60 percent of the European market is still untapped.

“The European market is being taken seriously now. Europe is not yet tapped as US was. However, now more and more Indian companies are focusing on Europe mainly for two reasons. One is it gives good hedge against North American markets. And European time zone allows Indian companies to use existing infrastructure in two different time zones. Thus able to utilise existing infrastructure at multiple times."

“Fundamentally European and American markets are the same. European market tends to consolidate all the services into one single requirement, whether it is technical support, managed services, application development etc. Whereas, in the US, people are very comfortable in terms of discretely going, in each one of the services,” he signs off.

So India need not be disheartened with the developments on various fronts. As someone has rightly put in that one man's inflation is another's income, there are newer vistas to be conquered for the Indian industries in the time to come. The dark clouds over the Indian IT and outsource industry will be only for a short term.