Indian IT firms on global talent hunt

Engineering campuses are not the only place Indian IT companies are returning to. They are also aggressively hiring in the US and other global markets. CNBC-TV18's Sunanda Jayaseelan reports.

It's a trillion dollar opportunity, one IT companies cannot, and are not ignoring. The US government is throwing open IT contracts and analysts say Indian technology firms are jumping on this as an opportunity to ramp up revenues from the US. More and more companies are now hiring Americans for these projects. Infosys , for one, has set itself aggressive targets to hire locally in the US.

V Balakrishnan, Chief Financial Officer, Infosys Technologies, said, "The US is a large opportunity, today about 5% of all our employees are local. Going ahead 15% of all our employees will be foreign nationals. This will hold true for our newly formed subsidiary in the US too."

IT consultants estimate that tier-one Indian IT firms will hire between 5,000-10,000 people, and tier-II and tier-III firms will hire upto 1,000 people over the medium to long term in the US alone.

Siddharth Pai, Managing Director, TPI India, said, "Depending on the company and the business strategy of course, anything between 15-20% of workforce will be foreign hires."
 
The US may not be the only playing field. Infosys, for instance, says it will look at more local hiring in the Europe as well, especially as it starts seeing demand picking up from these markets.