Apple closed down a Support Center, barely 3 months old. It came as a rude shock to the employees and pro-India bloggers and media alike, esp after a sound plan announced earlier. Apple had set itself a hiring target of 600 by the year-end. After a gala induction ceremony on April 17, the operations team went to Transworks for training. Some of the managers were about to leave for the US for further training when they were asked to stay put.
My friend and an enterpreneur, Gaurav Bhatnagar, lamented that “Apple has taken this drastic decision in too short a time“. Another one was supportive of Apple’s intended motive, as India has started its sheen as an outsourcing destination, citing rising wages and lack of liquidity in workforce as the reasons. I heard some more citing quality as the reason also.
I think otherwise. It reminds one of the November 2003 “celebrations” over Dell pulling back from India. Dell, barely 6000 something at that time, today has close to 15,000 people supporting its products from India.
I doubt if many know that it is not three months back that Apple started offshoring to India. The company had started outsourcing to a third party Indian service provider, Transworks, an Aditya Birla Group company way back in 2004. And that contract still stands valid. Simply speaking, Apple has not left India. It has just favored one offshoring model over another. My take is that,
The company stock has also been on a southward route. Apple has realized that it makes business sense to work through a third party route rather make more capital investment here in India at this point of time.
I’d say please pay attention to some of the recent news, like and chill:
- Cannan Partners, an early stage VC firm is opening their office in Delhi, India. It is led by Alok Mittal, who know local internet space well.
- IBM to invest $6 bn over next 3 years in India.
Update: Here’s slashdot discussing the news published in Business Standard.