Wipro Employs Over 14,000 Workers in U.S, Focused on Localizing More, Says Official

Indian IT firm Wipro has said that it is focused on localizing more in the United States, as over half of its workforce in the United States comprises local employees.

Saying that the company is committed to the U.S. market, Rishad Premji, the Chief Strategy Officer of Wipro, added that it currently has a workforce of more than 14,000 employees in the United States, out of which 58 per cent are locals.

“So we are not a 50-50 company. The United States still remains one of our largest markets so it’s an area of big focus for growth and I think if you cannot win in the U.S. market, you really won’t win globally,” Premji was quoted as saying by PTI.

Premji, who was in New York to address the NASSCOM C-Summit, said that the company is very committed to the U.S. market. “We are localizing more, we are hiring on a very structured basis from campus, which has been very very successful,” he said.

Asserting that Wipro has been hiring from college campuses in the United States for the past two years, Premji said that the company is now planning to scale that up in the future.

Over the past year, the firm has recruited 120 graduates from local universities, including the University of Texas at Austin, and University of Texas at Dallas, among others.

During the past decade, Wipro has invested over $2 billion in the United States. The firm has over 40 facilities across 23 American states. In financial year 2016-17, more than 3,000 locals were employed by the Indian company.

Wipro had earlier said in a statement that it plans on continuing to recruit people from leading universities in the United States in order to build on the drive of hiring locally in the country.

“We have a huge amount of commitment to this market, we want to be ingrained in the very natural fiber and fabric of this market and the communities in which we work and live and where our employees work and live,” Premji said, as per the report.

He noted that the company is also working with some universities which support programs with teachers who can help improve the universities’ own science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) capabilities. This will “produce better STEM-educated students in disadvantaged communities, Tier 2 and Tier 3 districts of the United States,” Premji added.

In March this year, Wipro had launched a new center in Plano, Texas, with plans to ramp up the number of employees in the state to over 2,000 in the coming years. The Texas Technology Center’s main focus was stated to be the development of niche capabilities in new and emerging technologies for Wipro’s clients, which include some of the most innovative companies in the United States.