Outsourcing questions- India vs. Philippines

Someone I worked with some years ago is looking for proofreaders for his new company. I told him I’m not interested but suggested he look into outsourcing possibilities.

Does anyone have any thoughts on whether India or the Philippines would be better? How do they differ in average salary? And how easy or hard would it be to find people with flawless (or nearly so) English writing capabilities in the two countries? How about people with editing experience?

I would love to hear from people with first or secondhand experience.

Take a look at elance.com

They have a referral program too, but you have to email your friends, so I can’t just post a link here and get the $20.

I was part of a Philippine delegation to India on a BPO outsourcing trip last Oct. The purpose of the trip was to seek BPO partnerships between Indian and Philippine firms. It was my first visit to India and the tour covered 4 cities: Hyderabad, Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi. I also spent a day at Chennai to visit a friend, who himself owns 2 BPO businesses

I can only speak very generally about what I saw - I am very new to BPO, so my observations can only be of limited value to you.

Here are my thoughts, fwiw

  • India is undoubtedly more sophisticated than the Philippines - the breadth of BPO services is so much greater: from infrastructure to changes being made to the education system (in some places) to the variety of industries
  • Our trip focused on ways the Philippines could offer “premium” BPO to complement what Indian firms could offer - in select sectors (like Animation) Filipinos seemed to be highly sought after by Indian firms and Western clients, but were still priced very competitively; I met a large group of expat Filipinos in Hyderabad
  • The Philippines seems a distant second to India, and needs to take concrete steps to its education system and salary levels if it is to compete with or partner with India
  • Both countries suffer severely from the high turnover (HR terms, not finance) in the industry - but the Philippines will probably “run out” of people much sooner

Since I have personal ties in the Philippines, I am more inclined to look for ways to develop business there on my own - I have friends and relatives who are involved in BPO there - from working in the business to owning large operations. (PM me if you would like me to connect you with some of them). I have also established 2 outsourced editing operations from Taipei to the Philippines over the past 4 years (I am no longer involved with them - but have friends who still do this). However, if I was consulting for a large project, I would take a good hard look at India for my clients - especially in Hyderabad and Bangalore.

I also know of a Filipino who used to live in Taiwan and moved back several years ago after he established his own translation/editing business. He is now based in Manila with his network of Mandarin translators and works on English editing for Taiwan and globally. His greatest concern (I am told) is translation/editing competition out of China, which is even lower cost than the Philippines.

It depends on the sector - so it varies.

On the whole, I think India is cheaper on average (again, this might not be a meaningful average)

Because I grew up in the Philippines, I have a good idea how to tap a network or recruit there. I have a cousin who, two years out of college, took on the challenge to build an outsource proof reading operation in the Philippines from scratch. This was around 1995. She went to UP Diliman (University of the Philippines, arguably the top university, and Diliman is in MetroManila) and organized a recruiting seminar, looking for people to transcribe and edit work from one of the divisions of Thomson (the massive Canadian media conglomerate). Within a month, she had over 100 UP students and graduates - and that operation continues to this day (she sold it to her dad years ago when she chose to settle down). Of course, this was 5 years BEFORE the BPO industry really blossomed in the RP

I bet you could pull a stunt like that in India, too - hang a shingle at a major university. But you need to find the right person to make this happen - whether they have the connections, the means and/or the motivation.

tmwc: Thanks for that, but it looked like the site had a mix of people, mostly from the West. I don’t think my ex-coworker is paying that well. He seems to be paying well for the translators but not for the proofreaders. So that’s why I recommended outsourcing from a non-Western country.

Goose Egg: Excellent information! I’ve emailed your post to my friend. I’ll definitely PM you if he’s interested. I think going with someone he’s been introduced to would be better now that I think of it.