Offshore development services in India: the ultimate guide

Emilien Coquard
5 min readAug 30, 2024

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If you’re looking for an updated guide on offshore development services in India, you’re in the right place.

In this article, you’ll learn why this Asian country is considered one of the best destinations to find and hire elite engineers. You’ll also discover why — as a tech leader — you should consider moving operations to Bangalore, the ‘Silicon Valley of Asia’.

But first, let’s start by defining offshore development services and why they’ve become a solution for Western companies looking for the specialised talent they can’t find at home.

What are offshore development services?

There are many common misconceptions about offshore software development.

And we aren’t surprised: its growing popularity has led to companies offering low-quality services.

Ironically, such circumstances allow CTOs, CIOs, and VPs of Engineering to discern between a reliable and an unreliable partner. The difference? A reliable partner can find the top 1% of talent from a large engineering talent pool, offering unparalleled flexibility to scale development teams.

Plus, they are crucial in helping US, UK, European, and Australian companies tackle the ongoing tech talent shortage in their regions.

Before diving into why and how to choose an offshore development partner in India, it’s essential to understand and get familiarised with the following concepts:

  • Offshore development: the process of moving tech operations overseas to access specialised expertise and reduce costs. E.g., a US-based organisation offshores software development to Bangalore to find niche developers to rapidly expand their team and product, addressing local talent scarcity more effectively.
  • Offshore development services: a range of IT-related services, including software development, application maintenance, and quality assurance performed by a dedicated development team. E.g., a European firm hires a team of 11 Magento software engineers to build and maintain its ecommerce platform.
  • Offshore development company: an organisation specialising in building top software development teams for businesses worldwide. E.g., an Indian offshore company builds a long-term software engineering team for a corporation headquartered in the UK.

What type of offshore development solutions can you benefit from?

Depending on your needs, you have different ways to hire talent and build your tech team. Here are some solutions you might consider:

  • Development team extension: get engineers to join your existing in-house team. Augmenting or extending your development team is an excellent way to hire specialised professionals on demand.
  • Dedicated development team: set up a standalone engineering team. Assembling a offshore dedicated development team involves hiring and onboarding world-class engineers who are fully committed to your business.
  • Offshore development centre: build multiple teams of engineers, business analysts, and data scientists. Establishing an offshore development centre allows you to have a diverse professional group working together in a fully equipped office space to drive innovation.

If you have specific requirements for building and scaling your engineering team, ask your offshore development company for custom-built solutions. A trusted partner will offer the flexibility you need.

How are offshore development services different from outsourcing?

In contrast to common belief, offshoring isn’t the same as outsourcing.

A company offering offshore development services builds long-term dedicated engineering teams integrated with an organisation’s mission and values. This means developers are an extension of businesses and work just for them.

A company offering outsourcing services generally hires engineers for short-term projects, with task-focused professionals who juggle multiple clients and projects. Since the main drivers for outsourcing are cost and delivery time, companies push hard for the lowest price possible, resulting in low-quality deliverables.

Introducing offshore software development services in India

Now that you know what offshore development services are, it’s time to dive into India as a top offshore destination.

Why choose India for offshore software development?

Moving your software development offshore to India is a critical strategic move for any business — and that means the benefits must be significant and tangible.

These are the three main pros of working with an offshore development services company in a renowned tech hub like Bangalore:

Accessing top Indian software developers

According to a 2022 report, the US has only 716,000 STEM Graduates. India has 2.6 million… and rising.

The country’s strong focus on IT and English education equips Indian engineers with the programming skills and tech proficiency to effectively address the American talent shortfall.

When establishing a development team in India, you gain access to a talent pool that’s five times larger than you’ll find locally, allowing you to select the best-suited candidates for your needs. This is one of the remarkable advantages quality offshoring offers.

Indian software developers are leading the offshoring game for several reasons, supported by (impressive) facts and statistics:

  • Specialised skills and expertise: Indian developers are known for possessing niche skills. The country’s tech industry leads in AI skills penetration and possesses the second-largest talent pool for AI/ML and Big Data Analytics globally. It also ranks third in the supply of cloud professionals, showcasing the expertise of tech professionals in these critical areas.
  • Economic growth and talent development: India is projected to become a trillion-dollar economy by 2027–28, with a substantial contribution from its tech industry. This growth is driven by the country’s vast and continuously expanding tech talent pool. Each year, approximately 90,000 fresh graduates emerge from top universities in India, equipped to tackle new challenges and contribute innovative solutions. This influx of young, highly skilled professionals contrasts with some Western countries that face difficulties in finding the right talent to build high-performing dev teams.
  • Large developer community and competitive edge: India’s developer community is one of the largest in the world, with approximately 5.8 million developers, ranking just behind China. This vast pool of talent creates a highly competitive environment where engineers are driven to improve and excel continuously. To stand out, Indian developers show remarkable grit and resilience, fostering a culture of innovation and ensuring they stay at the forefront of tech trends.
  • Innovative and collaborative spirit: Indian developers are eager to innovate and share their projects, as demonstrated by their growing presence on GitHub. The country’s community in the platform has expanded to 9.75 million users, with over 2.5 million new members joining in 2022 alone. If this trend continues, they could match the US GitHub developer population by 2025.

Achieving greater cost-effectiveness

Senior developers in Western countries like the US or the UK earn an average of €60–190 per hour.

However, these hourly rates don’t always guarantee superior services. Western engineers command high salaries due to their location rather than solely based on delivering high-quality services.

In India, the cost of living is significantly lower than in the West. A senior developer’s offshore software development rate is around €38 per hour, even in major metropolitan areas.

Despite some stereotypes, elite Indian engineers know niche programming languages and creative approaches to innovation just as well as their Western counterparts. That’s why hiring the best Indian developers is a smart choice.

Read the full article at : https://thescalers.com/offshore-development-services/

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