Indian software firms ready to relocate Japan staff

Indian software services firms on Tuesday braced to relocate their employees from Japan as panic spread following a rise in radioactive levels around a quake-hit nuclear power plant.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India's top software services exporter, said it was prepared to relocate its Indian staff in Japan, and smaller rival Infosys Technologies said some of its expatriate staff there had returned.

"We are ready to relocate our Indian employees and their families back to India as well as move our local Japanese employees and their families to other locations of safety," Tata Consultancy said in a statement.    

TCS has about 200 employees in Japan, a company executive said.

Several embassies advised staff and citizens to leave affected areas, tourists to cut short vacations and multinational companies either urged staff to leave or said they were considering plans to move outside Tokyo where low levels of radiation have been detected.

"Some of them have returned, some are in the process of coming back," Infosys chief executive S. Gopalakrishnan told Reuters, referring to the company's India employees in Japan, which has been devastated by last Friday's mammoth earthquake and tsunami.

"The revenue from Japan is very small and overall it will have a minimal impact on business," he said.

In a separate statement, Bangalore-based Infosys said that the company was facilitating travel of the employees and their families who had expressed a desire to return temporarily to safety.

"We will continue to support our clients locally and from offshore locations till the situation stabilises. We would like to reiterate that this is a temporary situation and that we are committed to our clients and operations in Japan," Infosys said.

Smaller Indian software services firm Zensar Technologies has told its about 55 employees in Japan that they can send their families back to India if they so desire, said Ganesh Natarajan, vice-chairman and chief executive.

If the situation worsened, the company was ready to shift its Japan business to centres in Shanghai and Pune, Zensar's base in western India, he added.