India growing as offshore outsourcing hub even for non-IT roles: Randstad India

Leading recruitment firm Randstad India's MD & CEO PS Viswanath sees India becoming a preferred destination for offshore outsourcing even in non-IT roles such as HR and payroll management, digital and social media marketing over the next 1-2 years, with several international firms reaching out to them to hire Indian talent without setting up an office in the country.

"India is considered one of the most preferred destinations for offshore outsourcing due to the availability of a global-standard skilled talent pool at viable costs. Apart from IT, we now see key roles in HR and payroll management, digital marketing, SEO, online reputation management and social media marketing being increasingly outsourced to India," Viswanath told Business Today.  

India is already the IT outsourcing hub of the world, with some 4.5 million professionals working on IT services projects for technology multinationals. With capabilities and scale honed over the past 20-25 years, Indian IT talent has developed from being merely a back-end processing centre to building highly skilled R&D centres. The factors that favoured this boom - a large pool of skilled and English-speaking talent available for lower wages - may also work in favour of other profiles.

Further, the pandemic experience has especially opened up remote work opportunities, which the Indian workforce can cash in on, several experts agree.

"The companies in the US don't mind people working from India. They reach out to recruiters like us and say, 'Can you make them (the talent) a part of your organisation and provide infrastructure like bandwidth and IT assets?'," said Viswanath, who took over as the multinational recruitment firm's India chief in July. The firm offers HR services to more than 1,000 clients across industries.

The arrangement has become feasible at least for the short term because of the work from anywhere trend born out of a necessity during the pandemic. "In next 1-2 years, offshore development model is going to emerge in a big way because if the person had gone to the US, the firms would have had to pay them higher salaries," he said.

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