Global IT giants are flocking to the country, setting up their own software development centers as well as spurring the growth of local firms. The attraction is highly qualified engineers and programmers available at a fraction of the wages of Western counterparts. The industry employs some 280,000 professionals today. The process is fanned by the fact that India's middle-class speaks English, the lingua franca of technology and the Internet, which gives its professionals a leg up on those of, say, China. One factor behind the IT industry's blossoming in India is improved international telecommunications that allow it to communicate with and send products to customers worldwide.
European companies can e-mail receipts to India for processing by accountants overnight.
IT giant Wipro plans to introduce technology so that mass-market helplines for customers of U.S. Internet services such as America Online can be run in India. This, as you can see, is just the tip of the iceberg. Goenka has already begun putting RPG's products for sale via the Internet, such as compact discs and cassettes from recording company His Master's Voice. More fundamentally, RPG is using computers to streamline innovatory management and scores of other operations. This is where the real impact on the economy is expected to come from in the future, when the power of computers and telecoms spreads from beyond the relatively small IT industry to the giants of the Old Economy, making them more efficient and competitive.