Despite the hiccups, a lot of companies are sourcing engineering services from India via captive units or through third-party providers. “At present engineering service offshoring is about 5 percent to 10 percent of the total work offshored to India. The latter is growing as there is lot of interest among clients,” says Sid Pai, Managing Director, TPI India. “Though in engineering services it’s early days as yet and key driver is the cost arbitrage advantage that India offers.”

Aerospace and Automobile Focus
Indian companies have focused on engineering services for aviation and automobile sectors. Currently, India-based vendors like HCL Technologies, Satyam, Infosys, Wipro, TCS and smaller niche players such as QuEST, are estimated to undertake work worth $600 million to $700 million annually.

Alexei Miller, EVP, DataArt

“While the cost [of offshoring engineering services to Russia] is comparable to India, the quality of easily available R&D talent [in Russia] is higher”