For IT engineers, the periodical one- or two-year stints in the US or Europe used to be the primary attraction of their jobs. They not only got to live in places that most Indians aspire to but, during those stints, they also received salaries substantially higher than in India and which allowed them to make significant savings. For business development professionals in IT, foreign travel used to be for shorter stints, but more frequent.
But that opportunity for travel is now fast diminishing for economic, business, diplomatic, strategic and technological reasons.
Foreign customers are asking IT vendors to maintain only a minimal staff onsite, given that they have to pay more for such staff, something they would like to avoid in the current dull economy. Visa and immigration rules have become extremely stringent, leading to a large number of visa rejections - 50% in L1 visa applications , 10% in H1 applications and 30% in the B1 category.
Indian IT providers are enlarging their local talent pools in customer markets in order to overcome the visa challenge, as also the political pressure in Western markets to hire locally. Some have even started hiring freshers from American and European university campuses. Such hiring means they need fewer Indians to travel to customer locations.
And finally, technologies like cloud computing, mobility, remote infrastructure management and Web collaboration solutions have made the aspect of physical presence in client locations less necessary.
BS Murthy, CEO of executive search firm HumanCapital, says foreign travel used to be the biggest carrot dangled by recruitment and HR heads till some time ago, but not any more. "Earlier, techies with two years of experience and more used to make three-four foreign trips to multiple geographies a year.
Today , travel is extremely limited, needbased and only cherry-picked senior people in business development, client engagement/delivery and consulting are traveling, and not so much the young crowd." Indian IT's body shopping phase of the 1990s had witnessed 100% of employees being onsite, at client locations overseas. The first half of the decade 2000-2010 saw the emergence of a hybrid model, with 60% of the staff in India, and 40% overseas. In subsequent years it came down to 70:30, and more recently it is said to be 80:20 and even 85:15 for many companies.
Mahalingam C, HR head at Symphony Services, says cost-conscious clients are trying to get as much work done offshore . But the basic premise of the offshore model, he says, is not just cost arbitrage , but speed-to-market and ability to follow the sun (being able to work 24 hours). "Companies today are diversity-conscious , want to be truly global players, are keen to be known in customer geographies and want to be an integral part of local communities and local activities. Therefore, they are hiring big time in the US and Europe and that has reduced the quantum of tech travel from India," adds Mahalingam.
SD Shibulal, CEO of Infosys Technologies , says, "Clients do have a say on the size of onsite staffing and also we are hiring in customer markets. So it's possible that travel from India has reduced."
Ravishankar B, senior VP at HCL Technologies, says countries across the globe are viewing immigration issues in a different perspective. "So, what is critical today is under what methodology you send people, where, and to do what. The preference goes to local talent . In the last year or more, we have been trying to create a lot of local jobs close to our customers."
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