The mantra of modern day companies is to outsource, both to save costs and to make use of local talent. India is not immune to this phenomenon, in fact it is at the crux of this.

At a time when other countries move up the value chain and come to India’s level in software business, the country is slowly but surely making its mark in the products and consulting segment.

Today companies swear by Indian expertise in consultancy and designing products that is used across the globe. In India the design of the basic underpinnings for most of the products comes from its decade long exposure to the global markets. Which means as Indian tech workers and companies went abroad, they learnt the way multinational companies implement and execute to do business and R&D. This has enabled India to realize they are second to none when it comes to building huge companies or products.

Underpinnings are basically the technology mastered by Western companies back in the days when they satiated the world’s thirst for technology and consultancy. They provided the consultation, made the software and also deployed them. As competition rose, they realized India was the best bet for such a job with their skills. Indians grabbed the opportunity and learnt the trick of business.

In the last few years, a growing number of enterprise product companies and VC backed startups have started using development centers and vendor partnerships in India to build and maintain the products. The idea is to make Indian operations more competitive and it has worked. Look at Motorola, GE or for that matter Intel and many more of their ilk, all have set up huge operations in India and sometimes these are bigger than their American operations, reflecting the faith Indians have attracted.

The growing recognition has led to an economic boom. Rising standard of living, more disposable income means higher purchasing power. The economic boom along with a stable market makes India an attractive destination for global companies to sell their products. The combination of new market creation in India and the availability of talent pool with product development expertise have triggered efforts to create innovations from India.

The last few years have also given rise to a set of domestic companies that have created world-class products. These companies are able to refine their output by selling to the Indian customers, who are known to be highly demanding. These refined and mature products are then released globally.

But the question of challenges and opportunities exists here. India has been in this circuit only for a while and the talent pool with product development experience is still evolving and it would take a few more years before the quality/size of this talent can be compared major technology centers across the world.

The engineering talent in India needs frequent exposure to the customers to understand their ever-changing needs. As more companies partner with educational institutes this challenge can be appropriately addressed.

The local market in India should get more attractive for product companies to sell their products to Indian enterprises. This would enable them to sell the products locally and refine the products before they are sold in the Western markets.