IT services must be more local, warns Infosys founder
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NR Narayana Murthy believes that India's IT services providers must do more hiring in customer markets to calm employment backlash
The founder of outsourcing giant Infosys has warned that India's IT services vendors must hire staff locally in the face of an anti-offshoring backlash among customer markets.
Speaking at the All India Management Association this week, NR Narayana Murthy advised the subcontinent's IT providers to hire more local staff for customer-facing roles in the UK and the US.
Measures to protect domestic employment have begun emerging in both countries – two of the industry's biggest markets – since the economic downturn set in.
"We have to make sure that we are not very visible in those markets," Murthy said. "Hire local talent. Hire Englishmen in England, hire Americans in the US and Brazilians in Brazil. The solution for us is to make the front end local, then no-one will raise any objection."
This summer, the state government of Ohio banned outsourcing among public sector agencies, while a nationwide bill designed to discourage offshoring work had to be thrown out by Republicans in the Senate. Authorities have also doubled the cost of migrant visas.
In the UK, next year's proposed immigration cap on non-European Union passport holders threatens the practice of India-based IT service providers exporting labour to this market.
Some India-based IT services vendors have appeared reluctant to employ large numbers of staff in customer markets in the past. In 2009, HCL Technologies CEO Vineet Nayar controversially described US graduates as "unemployable". The head of India's fourth-largest outsourcer claimed that they were too expensive in comparison with their counterparts from developing economies.
