Nearly 80,000 Indians with H-1B visas work for TCS, Infosys and other Indian IT companies — here's a company-wise breakup
Jun 26, 2020, 11:16 IST
- Among Indian IT companies in the US nearly 80,000 employees are there on visas with the majority using the coveted H-1B.
- TCS has the largest number of employees in the US within Indian IT services companies but only 40% are on the H-1B visa.
- Tech Mahindra and Cognizant half a great dependency with nearly of their US staff on H-1B.
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In a bid to protect American jobs, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on June 22 introducing restrictions on new visa applications — including the IT sector’s coveted H-1B visa. There are currently 79,649 Indians working with Indian IT companies — including Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Cognizant, Infosys, Tech Mahindra, HCL Technologies and Wipro — on visas in the US.
While the new visa restrictions don’t impact people who are existing visa holders, Japanese brokerage firm Nomura points out that it could lead to a further increase in the rejection rates of renewals. Renewal rejection rate has already been on the rise over the past five years increasing from around 4% in 2016 to nearly 21% in 2020 for Indian IT companies.
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TCS has the largest number of people working in the US as compared to other IT companies with 54,874 employees. On the total strength, only 40% are on visa; the rest are local employees. Within those who are in the US on a visa, 85% are on an H-1B visa — the others are on L-1 visas.
Like TCS, Infosys too only has 40% visa holders as US staff. Tech Mahindra and Cognizant are the only two companies with half of their employees in the US on visas.
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Wipro and HCL Tech was a lower dependency on the visa with only 35% of their staff in the US being non-local.
| Company | Staff in the US | Staff on L-1 visa | Staff on H-1B visa | Local staff | % on visa |
| TCS | 54,874 | 2,195 | 19,755 | 32,924 | 40% |
| Cognizant | 54,183 | 2,709 | 24,382 | 27,091 | 50% |
| Infosys | 36,228 | 1,449 | 13,042 | 21,737 | 40% |
| Wipro | 28,662 | 1,003 | 9,029 | 18,630 | 35% |
| HCL Tech | 22,855 | 800 | 7,199 | 14,856 | 35% |
| Tech Mahindra | 14,687 | 1,102 | 6,242 | 7,343 | 50% |
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