US work visa suspension to have ‘minimal impact’ on operations: HCL Tech

HCL Technologies on Friday termed the suspension of H1-B visas by the US as “unfortunate”, and said the move will have “minimal impact” on the IT services major in the short term, as it has been ramping up local hiring in that country for the past 10 years.

“We started investing in the centres in the US 10 years back, we have 15 scaled delivery centres in the US. We were one of the first to increase localisation, close to 67 percent of our employees in the US are locals.

“This is the trend, which we really pioneered in the industry and now we see several other players are following,” HCL Technologies President and CEO C Vijayakumar said.