Within 10 years, the IT offshoring brigade that leverage on value will walk away with the cream of Indian outsourcing business from the cost-squeezing firms, predicts Dan Gupta, chairman of the North America-based UST Global.

“The current thrust on low-end software coding should go. The best of deals on well-paying segments like engineering design, global network management, e-commerce are waiting to be tapped,” Satendra M Gupta (better known as Dan Gupta) told FE. Gupta has been a technocrat for over 40 years in Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and US, cutting his well-known IT mentoring tooth in IBM, before taking the UST Global chair.

Nasscom is doing some skill-building to go beyond the software coding track. “But, I could tell the Indian IT industry, it’ll have to do more to get the best out the emerging enormous international demand,” Gupta said.

As to gunning the big-billed segment, Gupta’s $500-million company should know best. UST Global works for a hand-picked list of just 42 behemoths in the Fortune-500 roster. “We use a ‘hybrid’ global sourcing model that mixes ‘Big Five’ consulting experience with delivery model of high value from offshore development,” according to Cindy Andreotti, strategic advisor, UST Global.

The company weathered the weak dollar impact, while many other software firms were hit. “Since our cash management is in dollar denomination, it took just 3% revenue loss, when there was 10% dip in dollar value, Sajan Pillai, CEO, UST Global India, said. The company has two bases in India, in Chennai and Kerala.

The California-based UST Global recently made worldwide headlines when it acquired the Canada-based software quality testing giant QA Labs Inc. This year, the firm figures in Gartner Research’s ‘Magic Quadrant’ of 29 top firms in North America. Forrester Research too has recently come to view this midsize player as “a vendor who can accommodate big company business’.

To match its ambitions to go beyond the plain vanilla software coding, the firm should also have deep pockets. What’s the right year for UST Global’s IPO?

Not when, US economy is ‘under a cloud’ said Gupta, referring to the sub-prime crisis. “Early 2009 is probably the right IPO climate in US,” he added.