Bangalore Butlers: Person-to-Person Offshoring

The New York Times has an interesting article today in its World Business section about “person-to-person offshoring," (see previous posts on PPO here and here):

The Bangalore butler is the latest development in offshore outsourcing.

The first wave of slicing up services work and sending it abroad has been all about business operations. Computer programming, call centers, product design and back-office jobs like accounting and billing have to some degree migrated abroad, mainly to India. The Internet, of course, makes it possible, while lower wages in developing nations make outsourcing attractive to corporate America.

The second wave, according to some entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and offshoring veterans, will be the globalization of consumer services (pictured above is a tutor in Chennai who tutors students in the U.S. for TutorVista).