Outsourcing From India
Compared to Ukraine, India is 6 times bigger in the territory and has a 30 times larger population. Consequently, the number of developers differs significantly as well: 2,75 million engineers work in India while in Ukraine the talent pool is much smaller — 192k.
India takes a lion’s share in the global IT market, having longtime experience in delivering outsourcing services. The country is ranked third in the world among startup communities in cybersecurity, IoT, analytics, and healthcare. Despite the vast availability of talent and low rates, the country still struggles to compete with its European and US counterparts in terms of tech adoption.
While Ukraine and India are both undeniable IT leaders in their regions with highly skilled software engineers and competitive rates, they have a list of differences you should pay attention to.
Geographic Position/English Level
If you have ever considered collaboration with an outsourcing vendor, you must understand the importance location plays. Constant communication with an outsourced team is inevitable if you want to stay aware of the development process and be confident that the result will meet your expectations. The time difference with Ukraine is more than convenient — 1 hour with Europe, and around 7 hours with the US. Whereas, approximately 5 hours between India and Europe and 10 hours with the US.
Being a democratic country with an active vector of European integration, Ukraine has made the English language compulsory in most schools and universities. Furthermore, almost every IT company offers free English courses for their employees, as a result — 80% of Ukrainian developers speak English, with 47% of them having an upper-intermediate level. India is the second English-speaking nation in the world, hosting call centers of the largest international corporations from all over the world. Though it’s important to take into account pronunciation, intonation, and tone differences that vary a lot from Western.
Education Level
The quality of services the country offers is strongly predetermined by the level of education of its citizens. Ukraine is listed among countries with an almost 100% literacy rate. According to 2015 statistics, the adult population literacy rate increased to 99,8% compared with 99.4% in 2001. More than 70% of the Ukrainian population has a secondary or higher education. Around 130k engineers annually graduate from universities which is more than in many European countries.
According to TopCoder and SkillValue, Ukrainian developers are among the best experts in the world. The 2019 study by DOU has shown that the majority of Ukrainian developers have a degree, while almost half of them are STEM-related. Moreover, Ukraine with 9.8% of all graduate students, has one of the largest shares of STEM and CS graduates in Europe.
Holding an important place in the global education industry, India has one of the largest higher education institutions networks in the world with more than 260 million students enrolled. According to the English Proficiency Index 2019, India was ranked 34th among 100 countries. India has 620 exclusively technical institutions, which makes technical education the most desirable and developed one. Though, the level of education still remains not high, with 25% of Indians being illiterate.
With the boom of technology and affordable internet services in the last few years, the education system in India has been reformed through the representation of a variety of digital platforms for education.
IT Company Statistics
IT product and outsourcing companies, captive centers of global business form an overall number of 1,600 software development service companies currently operating in Ukraine, that are successfully winning global industry awards such as GSA UK Awards, IT Europa Awards, Global Outsourcing 100, etc. Over 100 representatives of the Fortune 500 list of the most influential companies, including Volvo, Audi, Siemens, Lebara, Grammarly, and others are customers of Ukrainian outsourcing companies.
In 2020, the IT industry accounted for 8% of India’s GDP. The same year, the Indian IT industry recorded 138k new hires. TCS, Wipro, Infosys, and other leading Indian IT companies are actively leveraging AI and blockchain technology to bring innovation and create new workplaces. The National Association of Software and Service Companies reported that almost half of Fortune 500 companies outsource in India.
Data Safety and Insurance
According to HackerRank, Ukraine takes one of the top places in terms of security policies and technical safeguards. Data and intellectual property protection, conformity with the GDPR norms have become the main principle in delivering services of the Ukrainian software companies. While, India still faces a lot of security challenges, being a vulnerable country in terms of cyber-attacks and a lack of national-level architecture for cybersecurity.
