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All the steps Infosys is now taking “would be a huge change,” said Rod Bourgeois, an expert on the industry and the head of research at Deep Dive Equity Research. “It’s not in their DNA.”
Other big offshore outsourcing companies are also responding to the market and political threats, including Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro and Cognizant. But Infosys made the biggest, most public commitment to building up its work force in the United States, when the company declared last year that it would hire 10,000 workers in America by sometime in 2019.
Then, Infosys began to announce the creation of tech centers in America. Indianapolis was the first, followed by offices in Raleigh, N.C.; Providence, R.I.; and Hartford. Last month, the company said its next hub would be in Arizona. Infosys says it has hired more than 5,800 American workers.
“We will be looking for talent that is closer to our client clusters,” said Mr. Kumar, who is the point man in the company’s initiative to hire American workers. “And our operating model will evolve.”
For now, though, an estimated 80 percent of the 200,000 Infosys workers are in India, a market that accounts for 3 percent of its worldwide revenue of $11 billion last year. The company garners 60 percent of its revenue in North America, mainly in the United States, where Infosys employs more than 20,000 workers, analysts estimate. About two-thirds of the Infosys workers in America, they say, have been Indians with skilled-worker visas.
The main such visa program, H-1B, was intended to bring in talented foreigners with special skills who would complement the domestic work force and strengthen the United States economy.