Micro sourcing: India 2nd
By Sandhya

Every month, Indian mainstream media reports on multi million dollar outsourcing contracts signed by IT-ITES majors like TCS, Wipro, Infosys and Genpact.  Even as the deals worth hundreds of crores are being signed and serviced, individual Indians and small firms are working on projects sometimes worth only 100 dollars.

A number of international websites like Odesk, Guru and Elance bring overseas businesses in touch with individual Indian software developers, designers, content writers and even marketing experts.  These deals could range from below $100 to a few thousand dollars. Some even run into tens of thousands of dollars.

Odesk has just released its monthly Online Employment Report and it has a few surprises.  At the micro outsourcing level, the Top Provider Countries are (in order of ranking) Philippines, India, United States, Pakistan and Bangladesh. 

Other highlights of the ODesk report for the month of August, 2010 are that it has surpassed 1 Million hours per month worked online.  The online hiring is up 10% Month over Month and 129% more than the same period last year.  In USA, California is home to 20% of the Top U.S. Cities for online workers

ODesk contract jobs which are popular among its online workforce are web programming, web design, blog and article writing, Data Entry, Graphic Design, Website Content, SEO, Web Research etc.

Indians using Odesk earned $3 million in July, 2010.

What is also interesting are the Top Cities (by available providers in August 2010)

1 Chandigarh, India
2 Dhaka, Bangladesh
3 Mohali, India
4 Quezon City, Philippines
5 Iligan City, Philippines
6 Lahore, Pakistan
7 New Delhi, India
8 Manila, Philippines
9 Bangalore, India