Indian cities best for outsourcing - survey

NEW DELHI  - New Delhi is the most attractive city in the world for companies looking to set up offshore back office operations thanks to its cheapness and a large pool of skilled labour, a new survey by a U.S.-based consultancy says.

The next six slots in the league table produced by outsourcing consultancy neoIT are also filled by Indian cities -- Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai and Kolkata.

"The labour pool remains a huge advantage in India -- you don't have to spend lots of money training people up," Sabyasachi Satyaprasad, a senior director at neoIT, told reporters in New Delhi.

Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City is the most attractive non-Indian destination for offshoring jobs, followed by Manila, Shanghai and Moscow.

NeoIT, which has offices in India and the Philippines, used feedback from more than 60 of its clients to rank outsourcing destinations based on their infrastructure, costs, talent pool, language skills and other factors.

New Delhi edged above other Indian cities due to its relatively low cost of living and, by Indian standards, fairly good infrastructure.

India's rising wage bills and a perception it cannot provide watertight security are the main reasons why outsourcing companies may look elsewhere, Satyaprasad said.

The full Global City Competitiveness survey is online at http://www.neoit.com/gen/knowledgecenter/whitepapers.html (registration required).