India not stealing jobs from West: Premji

Countering the rancour in the West against outsourcing of jobs, Azim Premji, chairman, Wipro, said talent shortage made a mockery of the claim that India was stealing jobs from the West.

"Making rhetoric of jobs getting displaced in North America or Europe is not answering the question. What is of concern is how serious a shortage of technical talent is building up in the western world. Global companies are going to where not enough young boys and girls are getting into math, science and engineering. That trend is not being reversed," Premji said.

Jobs were getting displaced because there was not enough talent there to fill the jobs, Premji said.

He said as Wipro expanded into other countries, it often had to hire graduates from other disciplines and then send them to the company's campus in Bangalore to be trained in software engineering and other technical skills.

Premji said that with the company's Canadian operations growing rapidly, it would need more and more skilled graduates there. He said he expected Wipro's Canadian business to grow by 50% a year as it took on new clients, while hiring more Canadian engineers, executives and technical staff.

"Canada is a focus market for us," Premji said over lunch at an Indian restaurant in Mississauga, just west of Toronto. "We believe we can grow this market quite aggressively," he said.

Canada has been a small part of the Wipro Empire. Its 500 staff in Toronto, Windsor, Ottawa and Calgary help generate around $100 million of the global company's $5-billion in annual revenues.  The bulk of its staff works with Nortel Networks developing telecommunications switching equipment.

But the Canadian operation has gone from three clients to 20 in the past 18 months while adding 160 staff and setting up a dedicated sales team. Moving beyond telecom, Wipro is also courting Canadian insurance firms and energy utilities.

Reporting by Bal Krishna in Toronto