I have huge respect for Munjal Shah of Riya and I was pretty gob-smacked to read his most recent blog post announcing that they are shutting their Bangalore office and centralising all development in Silicon Valley. His reasons are compelling, particularly for a start-up, even a well funded one.

When we started our outsourcing search last July, we were open to getting the work done anywhere. I’d just had some good experiences in working with remote teams in China and India. But bit by bit the reality of time-zones and ease of access and finding companies whose reputation I knew meant that my search radius got smaller and smaller. And it ended up in Leighton Buzzard in the UK!

Munjal is not saying that the Indian economic juggernaut is coming to a stop, simply that the model of company that is suited to having an Indian development team is probably changing. In a similar way that Ireland was an offshore destination in the 1990’s and now makes use of other countries, the same is probably going to happen to India.