India is still great for outsourcing, but the market is saturated with work, so developers on the sub-continent can be more selective and charge higher rates. So what’s a company to do? The answer lies in India’s neighbors to the west says, TenPearls CEO Imran Aftab.
We sat down with Imran yesterday at his Reston office, where he tells us Pakistan, incidentally his native country, is becoming an outsourcing hotbed for US companies because of an educated technology workforce that so far has been underutilized (thanks, in part, to political reasons). Many Pakistani men come to the US to study and return home to be close to family. “In India there is so much work that the outsourcing firms can drop projects like nothing for a higher paying rate,” says Imran, who notes that Pakistan has not hit that saturation point.
Imran’s six-year-old company specializes in software application development, mobile apps, biz intel, and web portal development. It helps small and medium sized companies (think $5 million to $500 million) develop their product past version 1.0 by working with developers overseas. So what’s behind Imran’s unique company name (TenPearls, for those who are too lazy to scroll back up)? “My wife likes pearls, and I needed a prefix, so I thought of a perfect 10.” Outside of work, you can find Imran dominating local squash courts and playing with his three kids.