The Next Wave Of Outsourcing
As this article in the New York Times mentiones, the second wave, according to some entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and offshoring veterans, will be the globalization of consumer services.
The first wave of offshoring was all about business operations - computer programming, call centers, product design and back-office jobs like accounting and billing etc., but now the trends seems to be shifting towards an array of personal services like health and nutrition coaching, personal tax and legal advice, help with hobbies and cooking, learning new languages and skills and more, not to mention the role of a rather distant butler (Get Friday or Ask Sunday), or online tutoring (Tutorvista). These could be offered for affordable monthly fees or piecework rates.
“Consumer services delivered globally should be a huge market,” observed K. P. Balaraj, a managing director of the Indian arm of Sequoia Capital, a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley.
However, to present an organised face to such an industry would be extremely difficult, even though in a report earlier this year, Evalueserve predicted that “person-to-person offshoring,” both consumer services and services for small businesses, would grow rapidly, to more than $2 billion by 2015.
Filed under: Business, Ideas & Innovations