Finding Quality Businesses in India

A number of people have been asking me how business has been since I arrived here. I’ve now been meeting with Indian companies for over a month, and while I am far from exhausting the available resources, I’ve gotten a pretty good picture of the service (outsourcing) industry over here. I chose to go broad in my meetings, and have looked at a number of different industries including, legal services, publishing, healthcare, call centers, IT development, Multimedia and design, and even a few venture capital firms. In addition to looking for quality partners for my outsourcing partnership, I met with directors, CEO’s and founders of a number of companies or VC firms simply to pick their brains. This was hugely valuable in assessing where my value lies in being a US liaison to these service providers. What I’ve found here has surprised me. There are thousands of service providers here, but it is truly hard to find the high quality ones. I started out with a database of 1000’s of companies, contracted a research firm to pair it down based on my criteria (which has changed after getting here), then did my own online research based on the company’s web presence, and questioned people over the phone. Even with all these steps, I still found that after over 30 meetings in 4 weeks, I’ve found only a handful of companies that I’ll likely be doing business with. Not all of the rest were bad, but some just didn’t fit the profile I was looking for. However, I was surprised that I was running into that problem after taking the steps that I did. This has shown me that it must be extremely hard to find an appropriate vendor if you are in the US. Without some extensive research, coupled with a trip over here, it’s really a crap shoot. I can now understand why I get so many complaints about the pains of outsourcing. This made the last month more difficult than I imagined, but it also lends more value to what I end up bringing back, which are high quality, trustworthy, capable companies. The economy is booming over here, and the marketplace (not just in service providers, but in other industries as well) has been flooded with competitors. I do believe it’s somewhat of a bubble, but not too large of one. India has a huge amount of potential, and is still uncovering it. The issue is that not everyone who enters is ready to, or has the competency to take on the customers that approach them. The media-funded idea that the Indian market is tapped is nonsense. The amount of competition has made hiring and retention harder, as the infrastructure here is trying to keep up with the demand. However, there is still a lot of room for growth, and new industries in outsourcing that are popping up constantly. I’ll be taking off the next few weeks (from meetings, anyhow), and vacationing with friends and family in Mahableshwar, Goa, then Kerala. When I return to work in January, I’ll be doing a second round of meetings with the companies I’m partnering with, and should be coming home at the end of January with an offering I can be proud to offer.