Infosys to invest Rs1,600 cr for training

BANGALORE: Infosys is boosting its investments in training by more than two-and-half-times to Rs1,600 crore besides adding to the seating capacity, as scramble for talent in the industry gains further momentum.

The computer services major had the largest hiring of 30,946 employees in 2006-07.

"We aim at hiring 24,500 for this year (gross number without attrition)," said the Bangalore-based firm's Head for HRD, Training and Education, TV Mohandas Pai.

The NASDAQ-listed company, which expects $4 billion in revenues this fiscal, swears by a renewed focus on training to support its future growth, and is making substantial investments to create a scalable training engine at its sprawling global education hub in Mysore.

"Our total investment (in training) will be around Rs1,600 crore when completed this year", Pai said in an interview.

"It (the Mysore hub) will have training centres to train about 13,500 people in a single sitting, 400 faculty cabins, 10,000 residential rooms and other facilities".

In contrast, Infosys currently can train 4,500 at a time, and invested $140 million (around Rs600 crore) on training
last year.

Pai denied that Infosys, India's second largest software exporter, is finding it difficult to hire quality talent and that the country's software professionals have become 'prized commodity'.

"No. But they need to be trained and require a lot of investment in training."

He said manpower shortage is not going to be a major constraint for growth for top Indian IT companies provided they have large training establishments.