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Countering the rancour in the West against outsourcing of jobs, the chairman of IT major Wipro has said India was not stealing their jobs and its businesses were moving into developed countries, which did not have enough skilled graduates to compete in the global economy.
"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," Azim Premji said.
Premji said that as Wipro expands into other countries, it often has to hire graduates from other disciplines and then send them to its campus in Bangalore to be trained in software engineering and other technical skills.
Premji said the talent shortage makes a mockery of the claim that India is stealing jobs from the West.
"Making rhetoric of jobs getting displaced in North America or Europe is not answering the question," he said. "Jobs are getting displaced because there's not enough talent there to fill those jobs."
Premji said that with the company's Canadian operations growing rapidly, it will need more and more skilled graduates here. He said he expected Wipro's Canadian business to grow by 50 per cent a year as it takes 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."
Until now, Canada has been a small part of the Wipro empire. Its 500 staff in Toronto, Windsor, Ottawa and Calgary help generate about $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.