India, the outsourcing factory of the crypto world

Title: India, the Outsourcing Factory of the Crypto World

Author: Cookie

Source:

Repost: Mars Finance

On December 27, 2025, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong tweeted announcing that Hyderabad police in India had arrested a former Coinbase customer service representative and are still pursuing more suspects.

This is related to a data breach case with estimated losses of up to $400 million. According to Reuters, on June 2 of last year, six insiders revealed that Coinbase had known as early as January last year that its customer support outsourcing partner TaskUs experienced a user data leak. An employee at the company’s support center in Indore, India, was found taking photos of work computers with their personal phone and was suspected of selling Coinbase user data to a hacker along with an accomplice. The hacker used this information to impersonate Coinbase employees, scam victims for cryptocurrency, and demanded a $20 million ransom for user data from Coinbase.

However, despite progress in pursuing the suspects after such a serious security incident, Coinbase has not publicly announced whether they will shift to hiring employees from other countries or regions, or keep domestic US staff. This move has sparked dissatisfaction on X (Twitter), with many criticizing that outsourcing from India is unreliable and that Coinbase lacks a serious attitude towards user data security.

Although TaskUs is not an Indian company, the problem indeed occurred at its Indian branch. And it’s not only Coinbase that has suffered losses due to malicious actions by outsourced Indian employees.

One of the most famous “insider” cases in e-commerce is Amazon outsourcing “seller support” and “fraud review” services to third-party providers in Hyderabad and Bangalore. Some Indian outsourced employees communicate with third-party sellers via Telegram and other channels, being paid hundreds to thousands of dollars for deleting negative reviews, restoring suspended accounts, or leaking internal sales data of competitors. These employees earn only about $300–$500 per month.

Microsoft also outsourced its basic technical support to third-party providers in India. Similar issues occurred where outsourced employees, dissatisfied with their low wages, sold information to scam groups or even actively guided customers during work hours to click phishing sites or buy fake services.

These models—delegating customer service, support, and review tasks to external providers—are known as “BPO (Business Process Outsourcing).” To cut costs, improve efficiency, and focus on core business, companies outsource highly repetitive, non-creative processes to third parties.

Despite numerous problems, India remains the global leader in outsourcing. According to a report by Astute Analytica, the Indian BPO market was worth about $50 billion in 2024 and is expected to reach $139.35 billion by 2033. Voice-based processes are handled by Indians for 35% of the industry, while non-voice processes (email, online chat, etc.) account for 45%.

The massive scale, combined with structural issues, leads to chaos. It can solve problems but also create new ones. What is the real situation behind India’s outsourcing industry?

Cheap and irresistible, beyond resistance

Everyone agrees that one of the biggest advantages of Indian outsourcing is “cheapness.” This is true and even explains why Coinbase suffered a data leak loss of up to $400 million.

When TaskUs finally discovered the data breach, the mastermind Ashita Mishra’s phone contained data on over 10,000 Coinbase users. The employee and accomplices could earn $200 for each photo of user account data they took. Sometimes Mishra would take up to 200 photos a day.

According to 6figr.com, the annual salary for customer support positions at TaskUs is 330,000–400,000 rupees, roughly $3,700–$4,440 USD. Converted to daily wages, that’s less than $15 per day.

In other words, Mishra’s daily “photo-taking” income could be over 2,600 times the daily wage, which explains why hackers bribed outsourced TaskUs employees and how they succeeded in bribery.

In comparison, Coinbase’s expected salary for the “Customer Support Agent” position listed on web3.career is $69,000–$77,000.

There is a huge salary gap between “formal employment” and “outsourcing,” but the access to data for outsourced employees is not more strictly controlled. This is the reason for Coinbase’s data security incident.

As long as the human cost saved by outsourcing exceeds the compensation for accidents, these companies will continue. We can’t say they are shortsighted or sacrificing long-term interests. After the incident, these companies have taken measures to prevent similar accidents, such as Coinbase shifting from outsourced support to direct hiring after the breach. Currently, Amazon’s seller support center enforces strict physical controls—employees must surrender phones and smartwatches before entering, and no paper or pens are allowed at desks.

“Cheapness” is indeed a huge advantage, but if we look at the outsourced employees doing the actual work, “cheap” is fundamentally rooted in labor arbitrage industry practices. Moving work or production to lower-cost locations for profit is inherently layered with “subcontracting.” A large enterprise outsourcing contract often involves 2–4 layers of subcontracting, each deducting commissions, management fees, and profits.

Although there are no public data revealing how much Coinbase pays TaskUs, which results in Indian employees earning less than $15 a day, a 2022 report by Astute Analytica states that in top Indian cities, monthly salaries for support roles are about 15,000–20,000 rupees (roughly $165–$220), and in second-tier cities, even lower—8,000–12,000 rupees ($88–$132). The billing rates for outsourcing companies are about $12–$15 per hour for voice processes and $18–$22 per hour for non-voice processes.

That’s roughly like working 24 hours nonstop for a month, with the outsourcing company paying only the equivalent of one day’s salary. Due to the demanding nature of the work and high staff turnover—up to 30%, even after optimization—these wages are extremely low.

You might think, “It’s just customer service calls, why expect high wages?” But the global outsourcing industry in India for customer support is a different level of challenge. In 2024, the US contributed 55–60% of revenue for India’s outsourcing industry. Considering the roughly 12-hour time difference, workers can work in a near “24/7” environment, working on calls or screens almost without seeing daylight. For Indian customer support, communicating with Western users requires not only proficiency in business knowledge but also minimizing accent, familiarizing with regional dialects, idioms, and cultural nuances to communicate efficiently.

The “cheap” advantage is indeed irresistible, but it is built on the hard work and sweat of low-level Indian workers.

The counterattack of “cheap labor”: India’s outsourcing journey

In the early 1990s, India’s per capita income was less than one-tenth of the US. Moreover, India had a large pool of highly educated, English-speaking workforce. This led American managers to realize that instead of hiring expensive programmers domestically, outsourcing tasks to India was more cost-effective, with minimal barriers in documentation and conference calls.

Not only was there no “language barrier,” but India also had a 12-hour time difference with the US. When US companies finished work, they sent tasks to India; by the time the US workers started the next day, the tasks were completed. This “follow-the-sun” development model greatly shortened project cycles.

Doesn’t that sound like the “offline auto-upgrade” feature in idle mobile games? This is also called the “time zone dividend.”

As the saying goes, “timing, geography, and harmony,” and at the turn of the 21st century, the Y2K “millennium bug” crisis became India’s “timing” advantage. Faced with complex and tedious data storage issues caused by the bug, European and American companies, suffering from IT talent shortages and high labor costs, turned to Indian firms with cost and language advantages for data processing. Indian companies gained experience and customer channels in solving the “Y2K” problem, gaining fame and entering the fast lane.

To shed the “cheap labor” label, Indians also came up with a universal solution—certification. By the late 1990s, nearly 75% of companies with CMM Level 5 (highest software process maturity) certification worldwide were Indian. Holding such certificates signaled professionalism and process standardization, which Indians had realized nearly 30 years ago.

Over time, the Indian government also saw this as a lucrative industry. The IT sector didn’t require physical infrastructure—just fiber optic cables and talent. India established numerous Software Technology Parks (STPI), providing satellite links (to address infrastructure issues like power outages and poor connectivity) and tax incentives. Top Indian universities continued to cultivate industry-relevant talent.

Thus, India gradually developed a complete formula for conquering the global outsourcing market—cheap English-speaking talent + seizing historical opportunities (Y2K) + certification to establish professionalism + government support + ongoing talent development. They succeeded with this formula.

But now, this formula is beginning to show signs of divergence.

High-end “offshore outsourcing,” low-end “struggling”

Indians are not content with only doing repetitive low-end outsourcing work; they are still developing. In recent years, more and more well-known companies have established GCCs (Global Capability Centers) in India. Currently, India has over 1,900 GCCs, with about 35% of Fortune 500 companies owning such wholly owned R&D bases in India.

These include giants across various industries, such as JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Wells Fargo in finance; Microsoft, Amazon, Google in tech; Walmart, Target in retail.

These GCCs no longer handle customer support or basic code maintenance but are directly under the parent companies, responsible for global, core business activities. Indian GCCs now contribute over 50% of revenue in some cases, and about 45% of them manage end-to-end global product lifecycles, from concept design to final release, all in India. This means Indians are not only cheap but also capable.

GCCs are like these global top companies setting up “offshore outsourcing” operations in India.

It’s hard to imagine, but even Japanese companies have started to significantly move operations abroad, establishing GCCs in India over the past year. Honda and Hitachi expanded their R&D in India in 2025, citing slow digital transformation and talent gaps in Japan, while in India they can access cutting-edge AI and SDV (Software-Defined Vehicle) technologies at about one-third the cost.

In India, if you want to recruit 500 engineers skilled in specific cloud technologies within a month, Bangalore or Hyderabad’s job markets can respond quickly. India currently has about 20% of the world’s digital skills talent. In fields like generative AI, cybersecurity, and cloud architecture, its talent pool is unmatched by regions like Eastern Europe or Latin America.

Moreover, local Indian university graduates love to join these GCCs—they don’t have to leave home and enjoy the same benefits and career paths as employees of these global giants. The flywheel is spinning again.

As for repetitive, non-creative outsourcing jobs like customer support and review moderation, although some countries like Vietnam and the Philippines are emerging as competitors based on “cheapness,” the most threatening rival to India is the rapidly evolving AI technology.

Conclusion

So, Coinbase’s attitude is pragmatic—just good business decision-making. But the incident also exposed major internal management flaws.

Are there vulnerabilities? No problem. Coinbase will tighten controls, patch the gaps, and keep moving forward.

The reason why Indian outsourcing can “dominate the world” is clear—places cheaper than India don’t have as many skilled workers; regions with better English skills are more expensive; and places with cheaper labor lack the talent pool. The advantages that make big companies happy and able to negotiate easily are also the employees’ exhaustion and hardship.