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Blame the media including us that India has only been celebrating the great achievements of software giants such as TCS, Wipro, and Infosys. There seems to be no end to the coverage and limelight being hogged by these revenue and now employment generators. But the fact is that there are some very interesting aspects of Indian software that we have missed out.

Take for instance NIIT and Aptech. These IT training companies whose board one could see in every nook and corner of the country, about a decade ago, are now doing the same thing in unimaginable terrain-China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Mongolia, Turkey, Peru, Cuba, Ghana, Senegal, and Iran.

The motivation to get into foreign and often in-hospitable lands might be pure financial, but the impact will be far reaching. And eventually these training companies might actually have a big contribution towards global IT education.

Churning out IT-trained boys and girls on a global scale will have a manifold impact that will attribute to companies such as NIIT and Aptech. For instance, for leveraging e-Governance, that is often the initiation point for IT in the society. Similarly for generating jobs, IT training will be a big enabler. In these countries, the adoption of IT in business and governance can be effectively supported if there is trained manpower available.

Hardware and software vendors would no doubt be grateful if new markets come up and evolve, thanks to visionaries behind NIIT and Aptech. Global software players such as TCS, Wipro, and Infosys can work closely with these training institutes on foreign projects. Similarly, e-learning which is a high potential opportunity, will be easier for companies with global teaching experience.

Some of us think that by training professionals in many of these countries, we will actually be building and strengthening competition. And besides India, many other countries will become talent pools. I think this would be a very shortsighted approach, and availability of trained manpower globally will actually work to everybody's advantage.

The emerging concepts of global village, flat world, and level playing field will actually become a reality when IT would be the global language, and workers from Kazhakastan will get jobs in India, and professionals from El Salvador will find employment opportunity in South Africa.

Impact is likely to go far beyond business. Most of these countries where Indian players are spreading their training network are part of emerging or under-developed economies. In most of these places, even though levels of education are low, education is regarded highly. Indian companies imparting education in these countries will certainly generate lot of goodwill. In a way training companies like NIIT and Aptech could be India's global ambassadors. Simultaneously, there will be some pressure on India as well as host nations to keep relations friendly.

While there is lots of money and goodwill to be made, this also puts a lot of pressure on them. If you go back to the days when IT training was a mushrooming business in India, you will also remember the criticism training companies faced. There were issues related to quality of education from these private institutes, their admission and examination systems. In fact, eventually these training houses were blamed for creating too much hype when there were not too many job opportunities. It is a challenge that will have to be very carefully handled.

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