 Global Economy > The Changing Geography of Cheap Labor
Bangla outsourcer learned the
hard way, long way from home
Kamal Quadir is founder and creative director of GlobeKids Inc., an animation company in Bangladesh. His four-year experience outsourcing contracts to GlobeKids’s 70-employee studios in Dhaka has taught him countless unexpected lessons on the difficulties of outsourcing. Nothing, he says, has been as simple as he thought it would be. With support now from Grameen Bank and the World Bank, GlobeKids is moving closer to long-term sustainability, leaving Quadir, who is currently studying at the Sloane School of Business at M.I.T., with some moments to reflect.
Q. Your view of outsourcing today is quite different than it was when you launched your outsourcing business four years ago.
A. Yes, when I first got into this, I just thought about cheap labor. We can sell this thing. We are not alone. But many outsourcing companies forget the quality of human resources that they need. It’s a very common problem. People do not see the many hidden ingredients to make this viable.
Q. What was the personnel problem?
A. We had people, but not the right people. What you need for outsourcing primarily is a very good working enviornment, and that includes good education. This is not simple. Overnight you’re expecting that what people are doing in the cubicle next to mine they can also do overseas. But the gap is education, and it’s very important that you provide that first.
Q. So how, as a result, can quality suffer?
A. The breakdown happens in different phases. For example, with animation, we can’t compete with a Java program from Boston or Bangalore, but even there we suffered. We didn’t have the right people for it. Animation was the bottom of the food chain, but even there I failed! People have all these stereotypes.
Q. But what is so tricky about animation?
A. It can take seven to eight months to produce the final product. Imagine when Tom the Cat tries to hit Jerry the Mouse. You notice that when Jerry bends backward and Tom’s legs go up, it is neither a human nor animal move. There’s a choreography that works in animation, but you and I, we don’t see this, so animation is very different to learn from drawing. What contracts I eventually find to send to the studio have to fit the animators’ skill set.
Q. Did you see the US backlash against outsourcing coming?
A. Yes. Suddenly people are looking at this negatively. One person made an interesting point in a recent op-ed piece. As an outsourcing company grows, often all the materials are coming from Atlanta, Pennsylvania, and so on, so it’s still feeding the American economy. Many times these companies are providing services to Western countries and using tools produced by Western countries.
Q. How do you characterize outsourcing against the backdrop of the global economy?
A. The West has somewhat unjustly for too long taken advantage of its economic system, full advantage of the global economy. Take a look at the cotton industry. Africa has a way to grow cotton in a way that other countries can’t. But the subsidized cotton in America, how can I compete with that? There is also the good example of a French cow. Put it on a first-class flight around the world twice and that’s how much the cow receives in subsidies every year. You’re asking me to buy a car, but when I ask you to buy my milk, you won’t. So in that system, the West is always doing quite well.
Q. It does seem that there is a kind of comeuppance at play.
A. Outsourcing is threatening in the short term, and I may sound very radical, but if someone can do my job for one fifth of the cost, it’s irrational to think that I will get the job and he will not. But if you think about protection and protecting these jobs, in the long term, I don’t know what the benefit is going to be. American cars won’t be sold in India, or somewhere else, so you’ll have lousy cars and lousy service. People who are criticizing this issue, when they pick up the phone for customer service, they get someone in one minute instead of 50 minutes, as happened in the past. If you talk about the time lost, there’s a huge saving. If you look at it that way, it’s simply decreasing cost.
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