[plinkplonk]

I live in Bangalore. Did 'freelancing' for >10 years. Now doing a spot of product dev (so not doing that anymore). I know many people who do (and drop back into BigCo jobs for a year or two when they want to take it easy for a while). Lots of people freelance in Bangalore. The key is to have some kind of specialized skill (design,analytics, etc) - vs generic web stack (J2EE, RoR etc) skills.

[42_huh]

Hey! Great to know that I was wrong! Do you know a lot of people doing it/did it, or are you an exception? And who were you clients, i.e, were your clients Indian companies or are people in the US, UK etc ready to invest in freelancers in India.

And did it pay well enough for other people to consider it?

[plinkplonk]

I've worked for both Indian and US 'companies' (quotes because some were research labs etc).My 'clients' were people who came looking for me because they know someone who recommended me. I never did any marketing and have no skills therin, and probably would botch it if I tried.

I am not an exception.I know tonnes of people who do 'freelancing', though most of them end up starting small companies to take care of taxes etc. (they do much better marketing than I do) and work on a time and materials (x $/hour) basis (I don't). They work for companies in the US/Europe. With rare exceptions, it doesn't make economic sense to work for Indian companies, though it depends on the value you can add. Pays much better than the BigCo salaries (I know people making more than 100k US $).

The hard thing is establishing a reputation for competence, since with so many body shopping companies (Infosys, TCS etc) hiring (literally) battalions of borderline incompetents, "Indian developer" has come to be synonymous with "incompetent fraud" in many people's minds in the west (can't blame them, really), especially in the outsourced context. Standing out in this sea of ultra cheap incompetence takes a lot of work. The ability to communicate well (both oral and written) in English is critical.

All that said, here is some free advice. If you don't have any specialized skills, are not prepared to work really really hard (much harder than in your usual Indian Bigco), don't (personally) know any potential clients, don't jump into freelancing. It is not easy.

By the time I was ready to quit the 9 to 5 BigCompany grind, I had many offers to freelance. I just got lucky and I am really the wrong person to give advice on how to freelance in India.

And that is all I have to say. Cheers.