Infosys hires UK graduates, finds Indians much better

THE HR FACTOR: "Indians tend to be a little more flexible," says Infosys CEO Kris Gopalakrishnan.

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New Delhi: India's second-largest software exporter Infosys, which recently hired 25 graduates from the UK, finds Indians to be relatively more flexible when it comes to work, according to the company's CEO Kris Gopalakrishnan.

"Indians tend to be a little more flexible," Infosys CEO told in an interview to a newspaper when asked how he found the British graduates to deal with.

The company recently recruited 25 graduates from the UK universities. These candidates are currently in India undergoing training and would return to London to handle clients in Europe from offices in Canary Wharf, the daily said in a report published on Friday.

Infosys, - the inspiration for the book The World is Flat by author and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman - employs a rapidly growing army of relatively cheap software engineers churned out by Indian colleges with a workforce numbering 77,000, the paper said.

The company plans to hire another 26,000 this year. Gopalakrishnan is among the five founders still working at the company and took over as its CEO in July this year. Infosys as well as a number of other Indian IT companies have recently started expanding their overseas workforce in order to cater to their global clients in a more efficient manner.

Talking about the impact of globalisation, Infosys CEO said, "Competition is today global even at an individual level."

According to the report, amid growing challenge of attrition and rising wages, in order to retain talent, Infosys pampers its workers from a campus with a putting green, swimming pool, food courts and cinemas.

"Today if you are a factory worker or a software programmer or even a financial analyst or a banker, you have to worry about competing with somebody else in another part of the world, just as you know the farmer who is growing oranges in India is worrying about the oranges coming from California or apples coming from Australia, because that is what is coming to India now," Gopalakrishnan told the paper.

Even with the 450,000 engineers produced in India each year, big skill shortages are forecast by 2010, it said.

With inputs from agencies