New venture outsourcing blog

I recently received two interesting requests- one from the US and the other from India. One of our customers who had used our outsourcing services for his start-up asked me if I could help him find a printer in India. His family has a printing business and they are being squeezed by the Chinese. So they are looking to cut costs by outsourcing some of the routine, simpler orders to India. The second request was from a local business friend. He wants to setup a couple of mini golf courses and asked me to help him find a mini golf course manufacturer in US. Another client of ours, CRM learning (www.crmlearning.com) a producer of management training videos, already has a distributor in India. India is a growing market for educational products and services and I will not be surprised if CRM starts seeing sizable revenue contributions from here in the near future. I am sure there are a lot more small businesses in both countries trying to benefit from each others products and services. 

These two unrelated, yet connected events reaffirm my belief that small businesses can benefit greatly from globalization. That does not mean its all good- but on the margin it is doing more good than bad. Job loss in host countries is still a concern in large scale outsourcing deals. It is less of an issue when a start-up or a small but growing firm buys outsourcing services since the jobs are not yet created. In fact, outsourcing allows them to grow faster and more economically than they would otherwise, which in turn creates more jobs in other functions which need to stay onshore. Clearly, there is a case for small and new businesses to gain from offshore or other forms of outsourcing services. New, low cost yet very effective technologies like wiki are enabling companies to outsource even smaller projects cost effectively. Google recently  bought JotSpot which has such a technology- http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/what-joe-said.html .
The other half of the story is equally compelling. What Indian professionals are gaining through offshore outsourcing services to US and other parts is also helping create demand for services and products from US and elsewhere. Rising income in India and elsewhere due to business and IT outsourcing services is creating unprecedented demand. This is going to help all businesses- start-ups, small and large businesses.  As a small business owner, the question you need to ask is- are you ready to take advantage and grow your business or are you going to let your competitors get the better of you?   

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