Big news! Hmmm… Is there a reverse migration trend in the works? I wonder…
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One of India’s largest IT services firms, Wipro Ltd., is in the advance stages of finalizing a plan to build a software center in Atlanta that is expected to accommodate up to 1,000 employees over the next three years. It’s the first of four centers planned for the U.S.
Although Bangalore, India-based Wipro has 6,000 employees in North America — part of a workforce of more than 72,300 — they are spread among some 90 locations and provide sales and support.
Atlanta was selected because of its labor force and proximity to technical schools, said Sridhar Ramasubbu, Wipro’s chief financial officer for the Americas and Europe. The center will be used for application development and maintenance, infrastructure support, and some research and development. The center is expected to be operating in about three months.
Locations in other states have not been finalized, he said.
Ramasubbu said the Atlanta facility will meet the needs of customers who want some of their work to remain in the U.S. and help the company mitigate some of the restrictions it faces because of a federally mandated cap on H-1B visas. India’s high-tech trade group, the National Association of Software and Service Companies in Delhi, has asked the U.S. to increase the cap and called the visa limits a trade issue.
Wipro, as with other Indian offshore firms, is diversifying its development locations by opening facilities worldwide, including offices in China, Vietnam, the Philippines, eastern Europe, Romania and Latin America.
Read: Indian offshore firm plans 1,000-employee development center in Atlanta
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Indian companies are trying to move up the latter as Accenture and IBM are in their neighborhood hiring 100s of thousands all at low cost. Wipro and Infosys knows they can’t compete like this especially if there formula of volume staffing is copied. However they are tring to get into the more high-end consulting and customer relation side by hiring people in the US. I highly doubt that their strategy will succeed as their is a big cultural gap with Indians from India and Americans here. Hiring Americans for cheap when there’s not a caste barrier and working lots of overtime is not the American way. Additionally, Indian culture is very complex and political with so many different types of Indians. People that are from Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Calcutta are all different and to some degree don’t like each other. Religious factions are very chaotic with Hindus dominating and controlling over Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhist and Christians. The same nationalist Hindus probably have not dealt with much diversity as we see with people of all races in the US. Indians have strong hate against British, Chinese, Muslims mid-east countries, and especially Americans. There are alot of hypocritical aspects in an average Indian working here. In one way they hate Americans for our greed and bolsterous ways in another, they are more than happy to take the ol’ dead president and take it back home and build their castle and hire the untouchables to their bidding. Atlanta is going to facilitate Wipro when people in the US still need jobs. That’s just great! I get another political Indian guys reverse discriminating me at work and ganging up with other Indians to say how stupid I am, all in the USA. Got to love it.