There are still people out there, it seems, who think India's outsourcing industry is just a bunch of poorly paid clerks with PhDs doing mind-numbing drudgework. Until recently, one of them was the senior US insurance executive who visited the business processing arm of Wipro, India's third largest software and services company. He was soon disabused by his hosts.

What they showed him was a virtual back office staffed by insurance specialists equipped to handle a full range of tasks, from receiving claims to adjudicating them up to a value of £500,000 ($931,000). “We understand everything!” Raman Roy, head of the Wipro division, told his visitor. He immediately clinched a contract.