Infosys has been hit hardest as the company supports lowest percentage of native workers in the US.
The anxiety related to the proposed changes in the H-1B program has refused to die. With Trump administration pushing for changes in the controversial visa program, Indian IT giants are already facing dip in their market value.
India’s richest tech entrepreneurs, Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro Ltd; Shiv Nadar, chairman of HCL Technologies; Narayan Murthy, Nandan Nilekani and other founders of Infosys Ltd are witnessing a drop in net worth. The Live Mint reports that IT stocks of the Indian tech companies have dropped nearly three percent, while the bench mark index has climbed by more than half percent. “Whether these changes are a precursor for more radical measures is what is worrying companies,” said DD Mishra, a Pune-based research director at Gartner, told the Mint.
The argument is over the H-1B visa program, which is being criticized as a trajectory for cheap foreign labor. Every year, the US issues 85,000 H-1B visas to the highly skilled foreign workers. Most of these visas are utilized by the Indian tech industries. In fact, India is the biggest beneficiary of this work program taking about 70 percent of H-1Bs every year. With that kind of dependency, any change in the status-quo brings jitters to the IT companies that fear huge losses.
Reportedly, the IT sector provides nearly 4 million jobs in India and contributes nearly nine percent of gross domestic product. More than 60 percent of the revenue to the Indian IT companies comes from the US. “Difficulties in getting visas or rising salaries of H-1B employees will have a material impact on companies,” a Bangalore-based outsourcing company executive Rostow Ravanan told the Mint. Ravanan adds that these trends are “dangerous”.
In the current situation, companies are chalking out the contingency plans. They would have to either hire locally in America or shift work base outside America, most likely India.
2 Comments
i hope they didn’t blow all their money on bollywood babes and boys.
“They would have to either hire locally in America… ”
This sounds an admission that there are workers available in America which are currently being bypassed.