‘Only 2,000 visas sought this year from over 8,000 in 2015’

Tech major Wipro said it had significantly reduced its dependence on H-1B visas. The company has sought only 2,000 H-1B visas this year compared with more than 8,000 in 2015, indicating a 75% reduction over four years.

Explaining the rationale behind the drastic reduction in visa requirements to The Hindu, Wipro president and chief human resources officer Saurabh Govil said there wasn’t a significant difference between the landed cost of a person going from India to the U.S. and a fresher hired in that country.

Localisation up

Wipro’s localisation (number of people hired in the U.S. market as a percentage of the headcount there) has gone up significantly, from 40% a few years ago to 65.4% in the first quarter ended June 30. “We continue to invest and move up the localisation ratios in all our major markets like the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada, Singapore, Africa and the Middle East. In the U.S., we have reached new high of over 65%, up by 1% from March quarter,” Mr. Govil said. Wipro currently has over 15,000 employees in the U.S.

The company recruited more than 6,000 fresh graduates in a combination of on-campus and lateral hiring, globally during the April-June quarter. The company also set up a Digital and Technology Centre at Minneapolis, an Automation Lab at Melbourne and a Cloud Transformation Centre at Sydney.

“We are very focussed on building talent and capabilities internally, rather than hiring more laterals. Over 1 lakh of our employees have already been trained for digital platforms and web based capabilities in the last few years,” Mr. Govil added.