Acknowledging him as the person trying to direct the path of the offshoring movement, US magazine Forbes has described, Nasscom president Kiran Karnik, as the 'Face of the Year'.

"As president of the National Association of Software and Service Companies, Karnik is in a unique position to do just that," the magazine said in its latest issue.

Outsourcing and India: Complete coverage

Pointing out that its readers voted offshoring – the movement of traditionally high-paying jobs from rich countries to poorer nations -- as the most significant trend of 2003, Forbes said a lot of foreign companies are doing just that and over the last few years many crucial white collar tech jobs like application development, database design, integration and services have moved to India.

Technology currently accounts for three per cent of India's GDP or $16.5 billion, up from just $1.7 billion nine years ago and the big driver is exports of software and services to US, it said.

Offshore outsourcing was triggered by the intention to cut costs, but now it is not just driven by cost factors, the magazine said quoting Karnik.

While Karnik acknowledges the beginning of the backlash against outsourcing, he says, "We began to see some concern about loss of US jobs in 2003 and that has not been there in the past, but by and large that is not the mainstream view."