Indian Outsourcer Wipro Details U.S. Expansion PlansIndian Outsourcer Wipro Details U.S. Expansion Plans

Wipro, which announced this week it was acquiring U.S. based infrastructure management services provider Infocrossing for $600 million, has plans to open several software development and IT services facilities in the U.S.

In addition to a software development center that Wipro will open in Atlanta within the next three months, it's also eyeing Raleigh, N.C., Austin, Texas and Richmond, Virginia as the locations for three additional new U.S. facilities, said Sridhar Ramasubbu, Wipro CFO for Americas and Europe in an interview.

Those facilities could open in the next year, but the company first wants to see "how it goes" when its Atlanta center opens by year's end, Ramasubbu said. Wipro expects within three years to have about 1,000 American workers based in its Atlanta development center, he said.

In addition to software development, those centers likely will offer other IT services, including hardware design and business process outsourcing, he said.

Wipro looked at 650 cities in the U.S. before zeroing in on those possible choices, he said. Among the considerations were how amicable various states are to working with Wipro, as well as local scholarship programs that would help Wipro educate its U.S.-based talent. Wipro also considered other factors in cities, such as nearby colleges, cost of living, and the age of the population, he said.

To address the cost issues involved with hiring U.S. employees, the plan is for Wipro to recruit people with associate degrees, hire and train them, allow them to "earn while you learn" Wipro software development processes, Ramasubbu said. Some of the best candidate can go on to earn their four-year engineering degrees through tuition assistance from Wipro, as well as scholarships. Hiring staff with associate degrees is "lower cost" than recruiting engineers with four-year or grad degrees, he said.

"We're looking for ways to optimize" the investment in talent and expansion in the U.S., he said.

While Wipro is predominately seen as an Indian outsourcer, the push in the U.S. augments the company's expansion in other countries, including development centers in Brazil, Europe, China, Mexico and Canada, he said.

Wipro expects there to be scarcity of tech talent in different regions of the world, and want to be ready with needed resources globally, he said. "Its good to have sources in many various places," he said.

Also, large customer contracts, like those ranging from $500 million to $1 billion, are bound to include some element of services needed inside the U.S, which is another reason Wipro wants to set some stakes here, he said.

Ramasubbu also admits there are other benefits in hiring local American talent, including helping the company deflect criticism it gets about its reliance till now on bringing into the U.S. foreign workers with H-1B visas for U.S. customer engagements.

"This helps on the planning and image side, definitely," he said.