Seattle/Bangalore, July 03: Microsoft Corp, is starting to shift US-based jobs to India as it seeks to lower technical support and development costs, the world`s largest software maker said on Wednesday.

Microsoft, long seen as a growing company immune to job losses, is now considering cutbacks in the United States while increasing staff in India, which turns out tens of thousands of English-speaking software engineers each year.



"With lots of English-speaking talent, we were thinking of a better way to tap into that," S Somasegar, Microsoft`s Vice President of Windows Engineering Services, said.



Boosting its employee ranks in India also became a priority for the company after its Chairman Bill Gates announced $400 million in Indian investments over three years during a visit to the world`s second-most populous nation in November.


So far, Microsoft has about 200 engineers developing software in the south India city of Hyderabad where it opened its first non-US product development centre five years ago.



Microsoft, whose Windows operating system and Office desktop software run on more than 90 percent of the world`s personal computers, is recruiting people for a customer support centre being launched in Bangalore as part of a pilot program.

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Initially, Microsoft is hiring 150 people but industry sources said the centre could easily be scaled up to at least one thousand people in about two years if the pilot plan is successful.


"To meet the needs of our customers worldwide, we expect to continue to invest in a technical work force in India to assist us with our expanding product development, information technology and customer support functions," a spokeswoman of Microsoft in India said.



The software giant is betting on India`s vast pool of low-cost technical workers and engineers who can be hired for roughly one-fifth what their counterparts earn in the United States.

Somasegar said Microsoft could increase the number of software developers in India to as much as 500 by 2005, while it was still evaluating whether to expand its support staff.


That`s a key question for US Microsoft employees who work in product and technical support at several US locations.



Last week, Microsoft cut 161 jobs from its consulting services business and on Tuesday, unionized workers warned that Microsoft was planning to cut at least 800 employees from a facility in Texas.

Microsoft, which is also advertising aggressively for jobs in Bangalore, did not comment on the Communications Workers of America report.


"There may be some impact to US sites, but no decision has been made at this time," said Microsoft spokeswoman Stacy Drake.


India is of strategic importance to the company as the nation`s booming $9.5 billion-a-year software services export industry emerges as a key battleground in the tussle between Windows and its rival Linux operating systems.

Bureau Reprt