India Awakening…!

During the course of my work while tracking pharma industry in US, I was struck by the fact that outsourcing and off shoring work are emerging as strategic levers for the US’ pharmaceutical industry to face new challenges.

While it certainly is a challenge to the US economy, I was reminded of Thomas. Friedman’s book ‘The World Is Flat’, wherein; he examines businesses and competition in a technology-fueled global environment. He calls for call action by governments, businesses and individuals who must stay ahead of these trends in order to remain competitive. He discusses ‘10 flatteners’ that, he says, have leveled the global playing field. In that, outsourcing comes as the fifth. This has allowed companies to split service and manufacturing activities into components, with each component performed in the most efficient, cost-effective way.

Outsourced R&D activities to India provide competitive advantages in the form of access to well-developed and specialized skills, as well as a continuous stream of work from both countries. With all these features I really wonder is there anything else more that I can tell about India. I think Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore penned it better:

“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee to ever-widening thought and action -Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.”

And my country is waking up!

G Ravi