Indian IT equipped for the Donald Trump challenge, says Infosys founder Narayana Murthy

BENGALURU: Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy is confident that the Indian IT industry will be able to weather any challenges that Donald Trump's presidency might throw up.

“I have tremendous confidence in the smartness of Indian talent in finding high quality solutions to overcome whatever constraints they face anywhere in the world,“ said Murthy in an interaction with journalists on Thursday.

“From what I have read and heard, the concern of president-elect Trump is to make America great again. That is something every well-meaning politician from across the world would want to do,“ he added. Since Trump's victory in the US presidential race, there have been concerns that the Indian IT industry might face more restrictions especially on the H1B visa front.


“Trump's campaign has already outwardly promoted raising the H1B minimum salary to $100,000 per year (from $60K). This makes managing complex IT projects a lot more expensive and negate much of the cost advantage for complex engagement requiring “landed“ IT staff,“ wrote Phil Fersht, CEO of HfS Research, an IT research firm, in a recent blog post.

Murthy suggested that Indian companies would be better off if they reduced the ir onsite requirements and worked towards hiring more local talent in foreign markets.

“At Infosys, we had come up with a visa-independent delivery model (in 2013). What we said was: We would reduce the onsite effort requirements to 10-15% of total effort from the then 30% of total effort. We will recruit local talent in our markets to deliver these 10-15% efforts in the project cycle and the remaining 85%-90% will be delivered from countries like India using local talent,“ said Murthy, stressing on the importance of creating jobs in foreign markets.

The US is the largest market for the In dian IT industry, which accounts for 60% of IT exports. “It is important that we create jobs in India and everyone of our markets. After all, we are an industry of Indian multinationals. We have to create job opportunities for Indians in India, the British in Britain, the French in France, the Americans in US etc,“ added Murthy.