Infosys plans to set up campus in Shanghai

Infosys will set up a campus near Shanghai in China. Mohandas Pai, head, human resources, told newspersons here today that the Chinese government had offered Infosys land and the company was considering the proposal.

The company today has around 500 employees in China but is planning to have around 10,000 in about four years.

Pai said the company was trying to globalise its workforce and exploring countries such as the US and Latin America, where they could build workforces. It has already hired around 300 people in the US and 25 in the UK. Currently, just over 3 per cent of the company's workforce is of non-Indian origin.

However, Pai said while the company would explore other geographies, scaling up operations was possible in India only.

Pai said with tech sector growing at 30 per cent a year, there was bound be a shortage of skilled and technical manpower in about four to five years leading to wage inflation both in IT and ITES sectors. That, he felt, might affect the Industry's competitiveness.

This year, the top three IT players in the country will be recruiting about 75,000 people between them for services, while recruitment for BPO space are expected to be in the region of 1,60,000.

The wage inflation is expected to be between 12 per cent and 15 per cent. The presence of MNCs, Pai felt, had expanded the market with more people becoming attracted to the sector.

He said the government needed to invest more in creating educational facilities and added that Infosys was teaming up with around 250 engineering colleges to improve the quality of training in a bid to create more capacity.

Progeon, its BPO subsidiary, was also working with 400 colleges to assist the faculty and encourage youngsters.

The infotech industry, Pai observed, was expected to spend around $2.6 billion on training in three years with the cost of training a person at $5,000, while Infosys, will spend around $100 million a year on training.

In the next couple of years, the company will create 5.3 mn square feet of office space some of which will used as training facilities.