Indian software services exporter HCL Technologies said on Monday it will create 12,000 jobs in the US over the next five years as part of a plan to shore up business and increase client support in a key growth market.
Nearly 2,000 of the new jobs will go to college graduates over the next three years, HCL said.
There will be a variety of positions including IT consulting, cloud, data analytics, and digital engineering.
Ramachandran Sundararajan, Executive Vice President of Human Resources at HCL America Inc, told Reuters that it's essentially becoming a global delivery centre network and that part of the scheme of things is that customer proximity is an important aspect of how we plan our delivery.
India's $190 billion IT services industry, led by Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys, has used H 1B skilled worker visas to fly computer engineers to the US, its largest overseas market, temporarily to service clients.
Some companies started recruiting more heavily in the United States and some sped up acquisitions due to former US president Donald Trump's protectionist technology visa policies.
Sundarajan said that HCL has not made any strategic shift in its H1 - B dependence, and that the company's H 1 - B visa applications were among the lowest for India-based companies.
HCL opened a distribution center in Hartford, Connecticut last month to service industrial tools maker Stanley Black Decker.
The Indian company said at the time it planned to use the centre for clients in other industries, including aerospace and defence, insurance, life sciences and health care.