ESO - the next big thing?

ESO - Engineering Services Outsourcing, NASSCOM says, is the next big thing after BPO. A recent study by NASSCOM points to a $40 bn opportunity for India by 2020. Can India achieve this potential given the dearth of  talented engineers in this domain?

ESO requires domain expertise along with knowledge of CAD tools. There are a lot of engineers out there who are trained in CAD tools. But domain expertise comes only from hands on experience in the engineering industry. Recently I was reading one of the posts by Mr.Deelip Menezes (CEO and founder of Sycode) in his blog(http://www.deelip.com/Index.php?paged=2) which says that only 5% of CAD users in US have an engineering degree. What would be the number like in India?

Of the lakhs of engineers churned out of engineering colleges, how many really choose design as their career? Yet to see a study on this. Also, it is not clear whether the $40bn market includes areas like industrial/packaging design?


Will the new strategies adopted by CAD software vendors (eg.Alibre design giving CAD software for $99 ! , solidworks giving a three month trial license, PTC giving a limited version of their software for free... ) attract more engineers towards this career?

Let's wishfully hope that India can garner the great opportunity lying ahead.