Human resource is the most easily available and exploitable resource here..look at BPOs, KPOs, Software jobs, and now even I-Banks setting up captive centers in India. However, the benefit of setting up centers in India is the cost-factor which is a good business model but margins will be squeezed due to wage inflation in the future.
So the point here is - doing anything that can be done cheaper, faster, more efficiently than the western world should be in India. It will be easy to spot such sectors - I can think of outsourced services such as healthcare record-keeping, legal documentation, i-banking outsourcing, HR services (payrolls, performance appraisal systems) etc.
Check out "Copal Partners" they are outsourcing i-bank work (pitch books, ind. research) and doing very well and they have no competitors (I later realized that they have several competitors) and the sector has no entry barriers. They started 7 years back with 1 employee and now they are 1200+ people.
Higher education and training is another sector where I see potential. The labor force available can be termed as "semi-skilled" since high quality education and training is not available to everyone here. If u check, only 33% of the graduates get hired in the 1st year out of college even though there is massive demand by employers. So there is a gap that can be filled by training people to be fit for jobs offered. Some things could be at the low-end (BPO/KPO training) to high-end (setting up universities with foreign tie-ups).
A broad theme that I see here is - "lack of trust" in business. That is people do not extend credit to everyone, charge high interest rates, want tons of documentation before a business deal. This situation can be changed if I know that the person has been verified by an independent third party. So something like a credit reporting bureau for the financial industry, Kelley Blue Book or CarFax for automotive, background verification for hiring, business week ranking for b-schools, IQ testing/ work proficiency testing for pre-screening candidates, even product quality certification (ISO, J.D. Power, CMMi etc.). Anyone providing such a verification service will get business from both the parties.
