The new training centre of India's IT major Infosys in the US state of Indiana will be a "game changer" in creating talent and capabilities for the future, a top executive of the company has said.
Infosys announced yesterday that it would open its US Education Center in Indianapolis, which the company said would train American workers and create 1,000 additional jobs.
The announcement, made in the presence of US Vice President Mike Pence, comes a year after the company announced that it would establish an innovation hub in Indianapolis.
In all, Infosys efforts in Indianapolis would create 3,000 new jobs in this state of Pence.
"This is a game changer for us in terms of how are we able to scale out our digital talent in the United States," Infosys president Ravi Kumar told PTI yesterday.
The US Education Center of Infosys spread over 125,000 square feet would be housed at an unused terminal of former international airport of Indianapolis.
This, Kumar said, would help in bridging the technology skills gap in the US.
"We believe that this is game changing for Infosys. This is game changing for Indiana. It helps us to create talent and capabilities for the future, which is all large corporations are looking for," he said.
Infosys is providing an initial investment of USD 35 million to transform 70 acres of this old Indianapolis airport terminal.
But the entire project is slated to be USD 245 million and the campus would eventually be spread over 141 acres.
Last May the company announced to create 10,000 new jobs in the US in the space of digital technologies.
Since then it has announced four hubs in Indiana, North Carolina, Connecticut and a design hub in Rhode Island.
"The Indiana hub was to create 2,000 new jobs and we increased it to 3,000. The real big announcement today is about establishing a US education center in the US, which will focus on building capabilities and help train our employees as well as train our client principal who actually work with Infosys. So this is a fascinating opportunity for us to be capabilities of the future," Kumar said.
Of the 4,000-people hired by Infosys in the last one year, 800 are from schools and colleges in the US, for whom Infosys runs training, Kumar said.
"So, this training facility is to train campus hire, repurpose talent from legacy talent pools and continual learning for the experience," he said.
For those being hired from schools and colleges, Infosys does a boot camp for eight to 12 weeks."We teach them on digital technologies and then we want to put them on a client projects," Kumar said, adding that this is equivalent to the work that Infosys did in Mysore in India many years ago.
Observing that the clients of Infosys are looking for digital capabilities, he said they are looking for partners who can come and navigate them through the journey.
"We're building in context to what our clients are looking for. And that's what we're doing now," he said.
Refusing to comment on H-1B visa issues, Kumar said localisation is an important pillar of the strategy of Infosys.
"Localisation is an important part of the digital journey because in digital skills you need agile development, co-creation and being closer to clients. So, it's absolutely imperative that we localise the talent. We are doing now because it's an important part of scaling our capabilities," Kumar added.
