Locals form over 50% of workforce in US, says Wipro

Bengaluru: IT major Wipro on Wednesday said that locals now form over 50 percent of its workforce in the United States.

Over the past six months, the company hired over 1,600 employees by attracting and nurturing local talent to drive innovation and help transform clients businesses into digital enterprises, it said.

During the past decade, Wipro has invested over USD 2 billion in the United States, and has over 40 facilities across 23 states.

Stating that the company has been focused on creating jobs in the U.S., underscoring its strategy to build a deep reservoir of local talent based out of centers close to its clients, Wipro said that during FY16-17, over 3,000 locals joined the company and today it has a workforce of over 14,000 in the country.

The company will continue to recruit from top universities to build on the momentum of hiring locally in the United States, it said in a release.

Wipro has over 1,000 employees each in the states of Florida, California, Georgia and Texas, where it has established next-generation local delivery centers.

"Wipro has a steadfast commitment towards local communities where we are present. We will continue to build a strong local talent pool with diverse skill sets and make strategic investments in close proximity to our clients to serve them better," Wipro CEO & Executive Director Abidali Z. Neemuchwala said.

Wipro, which added two multi-client delivery centers in Mountain View, California and Farmington Hills, Michigan recently, staffed predominantly by local talent to offer engineering services to clients mainly in the automotive segment, said plans are also afoot to expand the existing centers in Tampa and Dallas.

This announcement by Wipro has come at a time when there is a growing sentiment of protectionism across various markets, including the US, that are seeking to safeguard jobs for locals and raise the bar for foreign workers.

Indian technology firms use H-1B visas to send their employees to work at customer sites in the US, which is the largest market for the over USD 110 billion Indian IT export industry.