Nearshore Americas

Major India Firms Catch Chilean Fever

SOURCE: DNAINDIA.COM
Chile is turning red hot for Indian information technology (IT) firms. After Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys Technologies and Wipro may be looking at setting up development centres in the Latin American country.
Raul Rivera Andueza, president of Foro Innovacion, a trade representative body, who is in India with the Chilean delegation to attend BangaloreIT.biz said 40 Indian IT and business processing outsourcing (BPO) companies, including majors like Infosys and Wipro, were keen on establishing operations in Chile.
“We have met Infosys’ head of Americas (Ashok Vemuri) and Wipro’s Azim Premji and both are interested in setting up centres in Chile. Infosys is likely to take decision about this in 2010. We have approached 40 IT companies along with these two and all of them are looking at the option of Chile for their operations in South America,” he said. Currently, only TCS has a presence in Chile with a development centre in Santiago, where it employs 2,500 people. It began operations in Chile in 2002 and offers consulting, BPO and IT services in the country.
Besides TCS, Polaris and Evalueserve are the other Indian IT firms present in Chile.
Infosys and Wipro are present in Latin America through their centres in Brazil and Mexico. Infosys has two development centres in Monterrey in Mexico. Wipro, too, has a centre in Monterrey, but has another one in Curitiba in Brazil.
“Infosys is expanding their markets consciously and is looking at presence in the emerging markets including West Asia, India, South and Latin America,” Infosys said in response to a DNA Money email on whether it would be setting up in Chile.
Sachin Mulay, general manager – branding and communication, Wipro said his company’s two centres were currently taking care of captive market in the region.
Mario Castillo, head of Invest Chile – CORFO, ministry of economy, said the Chilean government has recently come out with a global talent attraction programme, which has simplified the immigration and visa regulations to woo overseas IT companies to establish their base in Chile for tapping not just the local market potential but also servicing clients in the US and Europe, which are in same time zone.
He said Indian companies having difficulties in getting H1B visas for their IT professionals can easily move them to Chile and serve clients in the US.
“We have streamlined the visa processing for entrepreneurs and professionals to expedite it. We are also providing incentives for companies employing people in Chile, irrespective of whether they are from Chile or anywhere else,” Andueza said.

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Kirk Laughlin

Kirk Laughlin is an award-winning editor and subject expert in information technology and offshore BPO/ contact center strategies.

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