Infosys now has more than 10,000 American workers – Times of India

BENGALURU: Infosys has more than 10,000 Americans on its payroll, its chairman Nandan Nilekani said at the company’s 39th annual general meeting, as Indian IT service companies look to hire more locally to offset the challenges that have been posed by the decision of the US President to stop issuing H-1B visas till the end of this year.
India’s second largest IT company, under its previous CEO Vishal Sikka, said in 2017 that it would hire 10,000 people in the US. As part of that move, the company planned to open four new technology and innovation hubs across the country focusing on areas such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, user experience, emerging digital technologies, cloud, and big data.
“This year, we surpassed our Spring 2017 commitment to hire 10,000 American workers. We also hired over 19,000 college graduates from campuses in India,” said Nilekani. One such innovation hub in Indiana is expected to create 2,000 jobs by 2021. Infosys also added two delivery centres in Arizona, US and Dusseldorf, Germany.
Last week, smaller rival Wipro said that it doubled its hiring in the US – to 7,865 employees from 3,969 in four years. TCS, while it does not provide the break ups, said it “hired over 20,000 employees in the last five years, making us one of the top job creators in IT services and consulting.
Nilekani added that the Covid-19 pandemic is “extraordinary and unprecedented,” which has impacted all businesses from banking to technology. While bankers have to deal with deferred loan payments, 5G projects and adoption will slow down as well as corporates begin to reconsider their capital allocation.
“Technology is essential to get it all working, the efficiencies of automation to make it viable, and experiential design to unlock more value from this work. We will help our clients with all of that. We have already pivoted our resources to the new needs of our clients and strengthened our expertise in cloud, workplace transformation and smart automation to be able to help them accelerate and scale their digital endeavors,” the chairman added.