The Hindu Business Line : IT cos step up overseas hiring

Chennai, July 25 While large IT companies are adding multiples of 10,000 to their India operations, the figure for local hiring abroad, especially in low cost destinations, is much lower. But things may change this fiscal.

In the last three years, Wipro Technologies’ overseas software development manpower has grown from 5,000 employees to 11,000. The company, which has a majority of employees in the US, is now planning to hire aggressively from other local markets too.

Infosys, which has a workforce of about 72,000, recruited over 125 fresh graduates from the US last fiscal and is now looking at hiring candidates from the UK, Mexico, Czech Republic and China.

“We also expect to ramp up headcount at our Manila operations to 700 from the present 70 in a year,” said Mr Bikramjit Maitra, Vice-President and Head, Human Resources, Infosys Technologies. About three per cent of Infosys’ workforce (about 2,100 including subsidiaries) consists of employees in overseas offices.

Satyam Computer Services plans to double its headcount in China (to about 1,000), Malaysia (to about 300) and Cairo (to about 100). It also plans to step up hiring in Brazil and Hungary where it recently set up development centres, Mr Hari. T, Head- Human Resources, Satyam, told Business Line.

“In percentage growth terms, our overseas hiring has not kept pace with India hiring as it is only recently that we started looking overseas for talent,” he said.

Satyam has been adding an aggregate of 5,000-8,000 people a year over the last few years, and today employs about 30,000 people. Of these, 20 per cent are outside India.

At HCL Technologies, 0.5 per cent of the total work force of about 32,000 is non-Indian. The company has been ramping up overseas capacity but would like to maintain the ratio, a company spokesperson said.

HCL Technologies has been adding 3,000-5,000 employees a year for the last few years.

Is the strengthening rupee a cause for this increased pace of overseas capacity ramp up? Companies disagree. “Overseas ramp up is business driven. However, India continues to offer a very compelling value proposition on quality of talent and cost of operations compared to any other country,” said Mr Raja. V, Vice-President – Human Resources, International Operations, Wipro Technologies.

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