White Papers

Introduction During the last decade, the Indian economy has witnessed robust growth, recording a growth rate of 8–9% annually. With rising income and education levels, the aspirations of the common man have also increased. The Indian middle class, estimated to be 300 million people , has become more status conscious. A recent study by Neilson found India to be among the top three brand-conscious countries in the world . Clearly, the Indian consumer is no longer satisfied with—or loyal to—the old and familiar, but is rather looking for new and better alternatives. The Indian consumer’s preference for foreign brands...

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With the global economic crisis weighing heavily on financial institutions, it is no surprise that global as well as domestic banks are pursuing outsourcing strategies in an even more aggressive manner. Although traditional areas such as back-office and middle-office business process outsourcing in IT and customer service continue as the mainstay of the outsourcing spectrum, newer definitions are also rapidly emerging. Banks are increasingly looking at partnering with third-party outsourcing providers to realize efficiencies of scale and skill. Knowledge and analytics outsourcing, commonly referred to as Knowledge Process Outsourcing or KPO, are the new cornerstone of this outsourcing world....

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Authors: Bharti Chhatre and Mamta Mittal from Evalueserve Executive Summary Indian real estate companies are booking revenues even before they start the construction. This is possible under the currently used percentage of completion method of accounting, which allows companies to book revenues provided an agreement of sale has been signed with the buyer and a specified percentage of the project cost has been incurred. As a result, Indian real estate companies’ revenues are higher by as much as 30% as compared to the work done by them. Evalueserve believes that adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) will reflect...

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Background On January 8, 2008, Bombay stock market’s key index, SENSEX (i.e., Sensitive Index, which is composed of 30 companies), touched an all-time high of 20,873 and almost all analysts expected it to touch 25,000 before the end of 2008. Indeed, the market sentiment was overly buoyant and an uninterrupted rise of the Indian stock market seemed inevitable to market analysts, stockbrokers, businessmen, politicians, as well as the ordinary man. None of these analysts suspected that SENSEX would drop precipitously or that the Indian Rupee (INR), which had also appreciated to 39 INR to 1 USD, may drop like...

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Executive Summary Anyone who has dealt in knowledge-based processes such as consumer insight analytics and campaign support in telecom or retail banking, or competitive intelligence must have faced challenges such as these: Duplication of effort across silos and geographies Lack of well-defined taxonomies, market definitions, standardised templates and time stamps Wastage of resources due to lack of re-use of existing materials, and lack of access to up-to-date reports and timeliness Poor quality and inefficiency of work due to lack of specialisation and time availability Limited integration of company’s internal and external data, and the tacit knowledge in people’s minds...

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Executive Summary The mobile handset space has witnessed a paradigm shift in the last decade. From a near monopoly between the likes of Nokia and Motorola at the beginning of the decade to the huge influx of new entrants, the market structure has metamorphosed, particularly in cost-sensitive, volume-heavy markets such as China and India. Consequently, major handset manufacturers are likely to shift their focus from high-income (HI) developed economies to lower middle income (LMI) developing economies. Over the next five years, with the increasing number of subscribers coming from lower middle income (LMI) developing economies, the average size of...

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