Stefano Malnati is currently VP Engin at HireRight. He used to be VP Engin at PRAJA and before that a director at COmputer Vision. He has long experience in outsourcing. He worked with several companies in India for about a decade — even before outsourcing started becoming well-known.
He is now working with a team in Estonia. Estonia is a small country of 1.2M population and I had to ask him about the exact location. His experience is that outsourcing is more effective in Estonia because people are on average better trained and more hungry. Also, the language is not a big problem because they are managed by people who speak their language and those people are good in English. He considers outsourcing to Estonia significantly more cost-effective compared to India.
Currently oursourcing is generally considered equivalent to India. But other countries are trying to catch up fast. I saw a similar strong desire in Bulgaria. Naturally the lure of outsourced work is strong for several developing countries because of low resource requirement. India is definitely going to face increasing competition. So far things have been great for India — but are Indian leaders (both business and politics) ready for the challenge?