Body Shopping - Indian Body Shopping Networks

Indian Body Shopping Networks

In India, traditional body shopping has evolved in its due course post-Y2K era to create strong networking and collaboration between competing Indian body shops working abroad. All body shops claim to have the ability to place Indian workers in almost any country using the resources and services of other Indian bodyshops operating in the target country.

In one documented case study deemed as a typical example, a body shop in Hyderabad was able to win a 360 man-month deal with a U.S. company that urgently needed 40 IT workers with a very "specific" skill on a 9-month project. Although the Indian body shop company could easily find lower paid workers in India for the job, the H-1B visa process would take too long to bring them into the United States to work. Thus, the Indian firm forwarded a request to its associate network to locate 40 Indian temporary workers in the United States. A search was undertaken by the network for available Indian H-1B workers, resulting in a list of recently laid-off Indian H-1B workers in the USA. Sponsorship for the laid-off Indian H-1B workers was reassigned to the needing bodyshop and a portion of the newly employed workers salary was given as commission to the peer body shop that help locate the laid off H-1B workers in their associated peer network of Indian body shops. This process of quickly recruiting available H-1B holders is referred to as "body shopping".