Six days a week in the wee hours of the morning, Saswati Patnaik logs into her home computer.
The homemaker - and tutor for a Bangalore company called TutorVista - rises early to help Western high school students write English term papers, prepare essays or finish homework assignments.
Outsourcing, of course, started as a way for Western companies to lower costs by shifting work to cheaper locations.
After nearly two decades, that practice has become so mainstream that hundreds of US businesses - from Wall Street banks to law firms, architects and others - routinely outsource to India.
But now a growing number of individual Americans and Australians are following in the footsteps of businesses - and outsourcing homework.
For $US99 ($A107) a month, TutorVista customers from the US, Australia, Canada, Korea and the UK get unlimited coaching in English, maths or science from Patnaik or one of her 1,500 fellow tutors.Similar personalised services in the United States charge about $US40 ($A43) an hour.
"The economic downturn has pushed education to the top of the average American family’s monthly household budget," said Krishnan Ganesh, CEO and founder of TutorVista.
"More Americans feel that education is their only safety anchor, the only thing that can help them stay competitive in this world."
To meet growing demand, TutorVista is adding another 1,500 teachers across India in the next few weeks.
To be sure, homework outsourcing is no longer a novelty. Several Indian companies offer the service, operating like call centres with tutors sitting in a common office.
But companies like TutorVista are now extending the trend directly from the homes of Indian tutors to those of American students.
Technology has already made communication seamless from anywhere-India to anywhere-United States, said CEO Ganesh.
There is no stopping the trend now.
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http://www.watoday.com.au/world/outsourcing-homework-to-india-20100409-ryh3.html