Infosys is boosting its investments in training by more than two-and-half-times to Rs 1,600 crore besides adding to the seating capacity as scramble for talent in the industry gains further momentum.The Bangalore-based computer services major had the largest hiring of 30,946 employees in 2006-07."We are planning to hire 24,500 employees this year (gross number without attrition)," T V Mohandas Pai, head for HRD, training & education, Infosys, said.The Nasdaq-listed company, which expects $4 billion in revenue this fiscal, swears by a renewed focus on training to support its future growth, and is making substantial investments to create a scalable training engine at its sprawling global education hub in Mysore."Our total investment (in training) will be around Rs 1,600 crore when completed this year", Pai told PTI in an interview."It (the Mysore hub) will have training centres to train about 13,500 people in a single sitting, 400 faculty cabins, 10,000 residential rooms and other facilities".In contrast, Infosys currently can train 4,500 at a time, and invested $ 140 million (around Rs 600 crore) on training last year.Pai denied that Infosys, India's second largest software exporter, is finding it difficult to hire quality talent and that the country's software professionals have become "prized commodity". "No. But they need to be trained and require a lot of investment in training."He said manpower shortage is not going to be a major constraint for growth for top Indian IT companies provided they have large training establishments.
