The West's drive to save money has helped seven individuals in the world, including five Indians,make their billions by setting up shop to meet outsourcing needs.

Wipro Chairman Azim Premji, Infosys' N R Narayana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani and Senapathy Gopalakrishnan and HCL Technologies' Shiv Nadar are among the world's top outsourcing billionaires named by Forbesmagazine. Together, the five Indian outsourcing billionaires are estimated to be worth $20.7 billion, with Azim Premji's wealth pegged at $12.7 billion.

"There is such a rapid development of capital markets in other countries that even small discrepancies in salary and the cost of labour are significant," the report noted. "These billionaires have capitalised on the fact that developing nations are growing 2-3 times as quickly as countries like the US, essentially fuelling an offshore outsourcing trend whose expansion appears to have few
boundaries," the magazine said in its report.

In the Forbes list of 1,125 billionaires, Azim Premji was ranked 60th, while Shiv Nadar with a fortune worth $3.9 billion ranked 277. At 843rd position, Narayana Murthy was worth $1.4 billion,followed by Nandan Nilekani (1,014) and Senapathy Gopalakrishnan (1,062).Nilekani and Gopalakrishan had personal fortunes worth $1.1 billion and $1 billion,respectively.

Describing Infosys as a software services firm which started with only seven people and $250, Forbes said the company is a now a global leader in IT and consulting.


Source : 6. February. 2011, PTI