The Wharton School's online research journal is moving to look harder at Southeast Asia after seven years of publication.
Knowledge@Wharton, the school's online business-research journal, will be launching a new version for India this fall.
Mukul Pandya, the journal's editor-in-chief, described the effort as part of the journal's attempt "to spread and disseminate Wharton business analysis about India."
The journal features work from Wharton scholars on a wide range of contemporary business world topics.
And with India's booming economy -- it grew more than 7 percent last year, versus the U.S.'s 3.5 percent -- the attention of the journal's editors has turned eastward.
Knowledge@Wharton's new undertaking regarding India comes in response to the fact that "India is now increasing as one of the world's fastest growing economies," according to Pandya, who helped launch the journal's Chinese edition last year for similar reasons. "Given that, it just seemed like a logical place to look at in terms of our own expansion."
India is becoming a hot spot for big-name companies' information-technology operations. As an indication of this, companies by like American Express, Microsoft Corp. and IBM have all begun outsourcing service and research operations to the country.
Taking advantage of the large number of Indians who are not only skilled with technology but are also English speakers, businesses have also set up call centers in that country that deal with customer service and technology-related customer concerns.
Amazon.com, for example, uses IBM Dakash, a subsidiary of IBM, to provide customer service for Web-related issues in an office located outside New Delhi. Dealing with problems like erroneous shipments, Dakash hires employees to deal with customers 24 hours a day.
Because of the tremendous cost difference between hiring workers in the U.S. and in India -- the difference can be as much as 50 to 60 percent, according to Pandya -- companies like Amazon.com are seizing this opportunity to get their work done as efficiently as possible.
And with cutting costs being a recent global economic trend, "moving to India is the natural thing to do," said Wharton and Engineering senior Kunal Bahl, former president of the Wharton Economics Forum. This makes it a "a no-brainer decision for a number of big corporations to tap on these operations of moving to India."
And according to Bahl, Knowledge@Wharton's global expansion couldn't come soon enough.
Wharton sophomore Rita Bagai--vice president of the South Asia Society--noted the mutually beneficial aspects of pursuing economic ties with India.
"It's a win-win situation for both [the US and India] because any share of knowledge will only bring [the two] culturally closer together and...provide avenues for more cooperative relationships."
While the journal's editors are constantly examining the global economy to determine the next place to set up shop, there are currently no plans to expand elsewhere.
But the addition will still keep these Wharton writers busy for quite some time.
The process of setting up the new Web site site which will serve as the journal's Indian version is currently under way and will be completed after teams of writers are formed which can produce content for it.
Other tasks on the to-do list include working out marketing strategies and finding corporate sponsorship to support the Indian initiative.
Pandya said that sponsors of the journal's Indian edition will be very similar to the existing sponsors, which include General Electric Co. and Cisco Systems Inc.
"This is all the result of a tremendous ... international interest in business in India," Pandya said. "Knowledge@Wharton -- India edition -- will try to play an active role in delivering knowledge to these executives as they try to expand global offices."
Looking eastward
- The 'Knowledge@Wharton' online research journal is scheduled to start its new India publication this fall
- Editors say India's booming economy helped them decide to focus the new journal on the region
- Many American companies have outsourced technology-related jobs to the country
