According to a recent NASSCOM-Booz Allen Hamilton report, the aggregate revenue of engineering services outsourced worldwide is likely to skyrocket from $15 billion to $200 billion by 2020
With the digital revolution now in full swing, new products are being constantly launched, developed and upgraded especially in the automotive, consumer electronics, medical devices, and telecom industries. These develop-ments have opened up vast business opportunities for engineering services companies which play a critical role as partners of tech companies to enable them to meet their goals of incorp-orating quality, safety and reliability into the design and manufacture of their products.
With the demand for engineering services also coming in from abroad, creating an outsourced services industry, working in the newly emergent product engineering services industry is an attractive option for graduates of engineering and technology colleges.
According to ‘Globalisation of Engineering Services’, a report by Nasscom (National Association of Software and Services Companies) and the US-based global market research and consultancy firm Booz Allen Hamilton, the aggregate revenue of engineering services outsourced worldwide is likely to skyrocket from $15 billion (Rs.78,000 crore) to an estimated $200 billion (Rs.1040,000 crore) by 2020. This boom is expected to benefit Indian engineering firms in a big way with India emerging as the most preferred destination for engineering services outsourcing, followed by the US and China.
The basic academic qualification required for entry into this newly emergent service industry is a degree in any of the primary engineering disciplines depending on choice of industry segment. For example, for developing diagnostic or therapeutic medical devices, degrees in biomedical engineering or biotechnology are needed; for developing heavy industrial machinery, a degree in mechanical engineering or control systems engineering is useful and for designing and developing consumer electronics products, an electronics engineering background is critical. Additionally, specialised education in areas such as industrial design or human factors engineering is always valuable. Essen-tially, a product engineer’s job is to design and develop new products, new applications and improve and upgrade already successful products. This requires understanding customers’ needs, evaluating engineering blue-prints, testing and finishing new products.
“Companies and enterprises which manufacture and/or market products for mass consumption, computer software, automobiles, and aerospace engin-eering firms are examples of corporates always looking for skilled and inno-vative product engineers. Indeed, IT companies such as iGATE Patni, WIPRO and HCL have large PES (product engineering service) divisions. For committed hands-on engineers this is an exciting career option and PES companies are attracting highly skilled engineers, technologists and people with unconventional backgrounds such as Ph Ds, MBAs and even medically qualified persons,” says Satish Joshi, executive vice-president and head of product engineering services at iGATE Patni, a top-ranked IT services company (annual revenue: Rs.5,200 crore in fiscal 2010-2011) in the Global Black Book of Outsourcing, 2009.
An electrical engineering and computer science postgrad of IIT-Bombay, Joshi began his career as a scientific officer at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in 1980. In 1983, he signed up as senior software engineer at Patni Computer Systems which has morphed into iGATE Patni after it was acquired by iGATE in January, 2010.
According to Joshi, 12 percent of the global population of qualified engineers is hosted by India and the PES industry is expected to generate an estimated 250,000 jobs in the next few years. This number could swell to 1 million by 2020. “In iGATE Patni, we are keen to strengthen our PES capabilities for which we are planning to hire a significant number of engineering graduates in the near future. Currently our PES division has 3,200 highly educated and innovative engineers on its rolls, servicing several Fortune 500 companies in the products engineering industry through our 30 international offices in the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific,” says Joshi.
The good news for India’s engineers is that according to a Frost & Sullivan report, India’s automotive engineering services outsourcing industry is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 32 percent by the end of the next year, and is predicted to generate revenues aggregating US $ 2.2 billion (Rs.11,540 crore). “The PES industry, proclaimed as the last frontier of business process outsourcing, is headed for a spectacular take-off. The strategic advantage that we possess is a rich talent pool, R&D facilities, innovative business models, and market dyna-mics,” says Joshi.
Despite — or because of — recessi-onary winds sweeping the US and Europe in the wake of the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the Eurozone currency imbroglio, suddenly the future of India’s engineering graduates looks bright.
Indra Gidwani (Mumbai)