“Are you an IT Professional?” A question we faced repeatedly in Singapore

Singapore is a small country, but it’s an amazing tourist destination. Since we knew how family friendly it was, we decided to visit Singapore with my parents in 2018. 

We found people in Singapore to be quite friendly with tourists. Since we had my parents with us, we avoided public transport and mostly took cabs/taxis wherever we went. As majority of people in Singapore can speak and understand English very well, we had some good conversations with the taxi drivers. They would talk about different things, but most of them had some common questions for us – 

Are you an IT(Information Technology) professional? Which company are you working for here? Are your parents visiting you here?

By 2018, we had been to a few countries, but we never had to face questions like these in any other country. So why all those people in Singapore kept on asking us that?

To understand it, let us give you a little background about Singapore. 

Singapore is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. The country has low tax rates and is open to foreign businesses which has attracted many large business entities around the world to make Singapore as one of their key locations. Many Indian companies have also set up their base in Singapore. One study suggests that more than 8000 Indian companies have registered in Singapore since the year 2000. Many startups also favour Singapore as their registered office to avail the benefits of this relaxed economic policy and tax laws. Most of the companies in Singapore, including some large financial and e-commerce institutions, hire Indian IT professionals for their information technology and support functions. 

How Indians have dominated the Information Technology industry across the world is a common knowledge. But maybe because Singapore is such a small country, this is extremely visible and any Indian guy in their thirties is perceived as an IT Professional.

But having said all these things, here comes the irony

“I AM INDEED AN IT PROFESSIONAL ” .