Tomorrow's call centres: That's what BT's Ashutosh Sinha set out to find; and find he did a strange set of service opportunities.

Here is a business model that'll warm the cockles of many a veecee heart. Everyone hates getting wet. Yet, most people forget to arm themselves with umbrellas before venturing out. For the minority that doesn't, 'not forgetting' the umbrella behind somewhere becomes an obsession of sorts.

Now, what if some giant corporation with huge resources at its disposal were to buy lots (and lots) of umbrellas and set up an umbrella exchange? Counters at post offices, fast food restaurants, florists, book shops, and ubiquitous corner stores would issue umbrellas to anyone caught in a shower for a quantum of money (slightly higher than the cost of the umbrella itself). Users could return the umbrellas at any outlet affiliated to the exchange and receive their deposits back, less a small percentage for the use of the thingamajig.

This business idea isn't our own; it was first aired by a dissolute French nobleman who makes an appearance in P.G. Wodehouse's French Leave.

If you're smart, you must have guessed from the general drift of things that we are going to stick our neck out and make some predictions about new business opportunities that will emerge over the next few years in India. Let us make two promises to you, gentle reader, before we embark on this voyage of discovery (forgive the hyperbole, but we are told that's the way Oracles generally talk). One, we will not name esoteric businesses like the one offered by Cryonics Institute (www.cryonics.org), based in Michigan, that promises, in return for a small fee, to freeze the corpse of subscribers and bring it (is that the right pronoun for a corpse?) back to life when technology makes it possible to do so.

Instead, we'll restrict our predictions to businesses that will sprout around us, the way computer schools did in the 1980s and early 1990s and medical transcription shops and call-centres did later in the decade. Two, we promise not to use the terms 'English-speaking', 'talent pool', or 'highly-skilled' (or any combination thereof) anywhere in this composition. Now that we have established our intent (and good intentions), here are five businesses that will emerge, and become commonplace, in the years to come.

Education 

''Won't you take me back to school; I need to learn the golden rule''

Forget what those glorified pop-meisters, The Moody Blues, sang; close to 400 million Indians haven't stepped inside (not even by accident) anything that can be termed an educational institution; and the 600 million that have could do with tips on a thing or two: traffic and table manners, the art of small talk, politeness, languages (English, in most cases), comp-skills, ATM-usage... the list could go on.

Not every company that ventures into the business of education will succeed; only those that have a scalable business model built around high-volumes and low margins will. Hint: the route adopted by comp schools like NIIT and Aptech could provide some guidance to would-be education majors.

Organised Executive Support Services

That's a mouthful, but the increase in the number of working couples in the four metros-estimates suggest that these households will increase from more than 15 lakh in 2000 to nearly 35 lakh in 2005-will witness a corresponding rise in the demand for support services like plumbing, housekeeping, and day-care.

Most of these services are already available, but the providers are either individuals or companies belonging to the unorganised sector. That presents a great opportunity for large companies with money to burn. Working couples would, for instance, prefer a day-care centre run by a corporate that runs 100 of them in a standardised Mcburger-all patties have to be exactly one centimetre thick-kind of way.

Drug Testing

No, we're not asking Indian companies to run after reluctant athletes with test tubes; this drug testing is an integral part of the new drug discovery process. The Boston Consulting Group estimates that this entire process, from conception to market, costs $400 million. Of this, $80 million is the cost of identifying or discovering a drug; the balance $320 million is spent on pre-clinical and clinical trials. Here is how the process works: from a basket of 100,000 compounds during experimentation and early discovery, the number is narrowed down to approximately 1,000.

Clinical trials in three stages-these could last up to five years-bring that number down to five. With its diverse genetic pool, India could serve as an ideal testing ground. Ergo, a company that just builds an expertise in managing large-scale testing processes could find its services in demand among a host of transnational pharma majors.

Repurposing Internet Content

Forrester Research estimates that there are 4.2 billion pages of content out there on the www. But the bulk of this content has been tailored for optimal interactivity on a personal computer. With other internet access devices becoming popular, this content will have to be re-purposed-just like old COBOL programmers had to be post-y2k-for devices like palmtops, PDAs, mobile phones, and any other device that emerges on the tech horizon.

True, this work is likely to be back-breaking, boring, and won't exactly do much for upward mobility along the value chain (a sudden obsession among Indian companies). However, it will pay moderately well, require lots of cheap labour, and may well end up being the next big thing for Indian companies after the bug.

Finally, since 90 per cent of internet content is in English, techies who speak some form of the language will have an advantage, but in keeping with the spirit of promise #2, we will leave it at that.

Design

Design is a critical function in manufacturing companies. It is also rapidly emerging as a source of competitive advantage. Increasingly, though, design is becoming something you do on a high-end workstation using high-end computing tools. The catch? It requires not just it skills but an understanding of niche disciplines-like structural and materials engineering or control systems. For instance, someone designing an aircraft that needs to escape detection by radars will need to have not just an understanding of design and aerodynamics, but a fine grasp of materials science.

This is something India has in spades. The country's over 5,000 engineering colleges (including industrial training institutes) churn out an average of 45,000 engineers every year. IIT-Delhi, for instance, produces nearly 50 metallurgical and mechanical engineers every year. Companies that leverage these skills can build a global business in design by promising cost- and time-advantages to transnational clients. Fortunately, design is right up there at the tip of the value chain, so no one's going to complain about this opportunity.

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