India’s Software Industry is declining. Know why?

The title says it all and I’d come to the point right away.

1. Certain important officials and policies.

I know entrepreneurs who’ve told me privately how they couldn’t set up industries in their hometown simply because they didn’t wish to give a “share” to certain humans. No one bothered to know how their products would benefit the human race, rather they were treated as if some kind of favour was being done on them.

2. Misplaced priorities.

People around me prefer working for foreign firms instead of Indian ones simply because when Indian firms pay Rs. 10 they pay Rs. 15. They overlook the fact that a lot of such firms pay Rs. 100 for the same work in their home countries. So who gets the remaining 85 that they’ve saved?

I am not stereotyping those working for foreign firms, just stating the fact that many of us end up giving preference to pay package over purpose of life.

3. Investors.

They do not have much faith in Indian tech firms. I have seen the turmoil some face here while approaching for investment, simply because investors have certain misconceived notions about us in their minds.

4. Brain drain over here.

People working in Indian counterparts of several MNC’s have told me on condition of anonymity that brainwashing is being done on them that is employees are being made to feel Indian firms are terrible and they should never work there. They also tell me that their organizations have kept well-paid executives at respectable posts to blindly execute the roadmap set by their foreign counterparts which has less to do with developing the best employees and more to do with making employees do “dirty work” at less pay. They’ve told me stories about firing employees publicly just so that they’d make the remaining ones fear losing it all and in the process make them work more without demanding their deserved pay levels.

Some people might be wondering the authenticity of these claims; I firmly believe that when several people tell similar stories then it means there is something genuine in their words.

5. Mismanagement by few Indian companies.

Apart from the Ramalinga Raju sham, some of my friends working in Indian IT firms complain about lack of employee friendly policies. I am not stereotyping all Indian IT firms, I’ve heard great stuff about some of them as well, but then an organization is as happy as its most dissatisfied employee.

A dear friend of mine, on condition of anonymity, told me about his organization doing cost cutting to the extent of removing newspapers in reception and making employees devoid of certain basic necessities. He told another incident that shocked me to the core. He said that in addition to cutting down on onsite’s and live classroom training’s his organization has started hiring employees on contract basis. Earlier they used to have a permanent employee earning Rs. 30 thousand per month, now they hire a contractor on a 4 year bond paying him Rs. 18 thousand per month in the first year, Rs. 21 thousand in the second year, Rs. 24 thousand in the third year, Rs. 27 thousand in the fourth year, and finally if s/he does not get fired due to bad performance then s/he is given a permanent employment at Rs. 30 thousand per month, irregardless of inflation that has taken place in the last 4 years. It’s not uncommon to see such contractors getting laid off and newer, younger ones coming in to replace them. There is huge supply of engineers looking for jobs but his organization is creating less vacancies so as to make the existing ones work more without a significant salary raise.

6. Appreciate positives.

It’s not uncommon to have misconception that anything made in Silicon Valley is gold. I am not putting that down, they deserve all the success they’ve achieved and must have worked genuinely hard for that. What I am saying is, we have a lot of great Software products here that are actually better than their Silicon Valley counterparts but we aren’t giving enough support to them.

It’s vital that we appreciate the goodness that resides here.

You can lend your support to college students launching their own startups, who knows they might make it big some day.
You may set aside some of your savings as investment in tech firms with a vision, because they need resources to scale.
Follow sites such as YourStory and ProductNation that cover Indian product startups, you’d be amazed to see some great work over here.
Most important of all – believe that we can compete with practically anyone on the planet.

7. Faith in Indian organizations.

I am aware of few Indian non-IT organizations that deliberately gave contract to foreign IT firms just because they did not have faith in Indian ones. Later they switched to Indian ones as they were not particularly satisfied with those foreign firms. They signed the contract in Dollars, got work done in India by paying employees in Rupees, had entire profits themselves of which very less came to India, and didn’t deliver the kind of “exceptional” service they had promised while signing the contract. Better late than never.

Not saying that by default an Indian IT firm would do a better job than a non-Indian one, just saying we must look at various parameters while evaluating an organization.

8. Quality of education.

We need to revamp in a major way. I believe it is better to self-learn from e-learning sites rather than attaining Computer Science degrees from most Engineering colleges that are surviving simply because their students are getting placed in IT Services firms and practically no one questioning how relevant the course actually was for students. Most employees make little use of what they learned in college where they graduated by cramming up stuff at the last moment. Many such courses don’t change a lot over time due to which hardly any mainstream college teaches trending stuff such as development of mobile apps and user experience.

9. Media.

Most tech media is based abroad which does not give a lot of coverage to Indian products. So we don’t have a lot of awareness on what is going on here. We need to explore Indian startups on our own, Internet has made a lot of stuff viable and possibilities are endless for anyone seeking an answer.