Over 20 per cent of TCS' hiring in last 12 months was outside India

New Delhi: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India's largest software services firm, hired over 20 per cent of its new recruits in the last one year in international markets as part of its "localisation initiatives".

In the October-December 2017 quarter alone, the Mumbai- headquartered firm recruited almost 3,000 people from outside India.

"Overall, in the last 12 months, we have recruited 59,700 employees, which includes 12,700 recruited outside India, a good indicator of how our localisation initiatives are progressing," TCS CEO and Managing Director Rajesh Gopinathan said in a recent investor call.

He added that the company has "always prided ourselves in our ability to attract and retain diverse talent".

TCS, however, did not provide details of the geographies where hiring was done.

"...we continue to recruit steadily and in Q3 we added 12,534 employees on a gross basis, of which almost 3,000 were recruited outside India... we closed the quarter with the total headcount of 390,880 employees," he said.

Indian IT firms have been ramping up local hiring in offshore markets to tackle visa-related challenges.

While hiring locals in overseas markets often pushes up operational costs for IT outsourcing companies, Indian IT companies are hiring more local talents in offshore markets to ensure compliance with rules as governments in markets like the US, Australia and New Zealand are tightening their work visa norms.

New technologies like automation and artificial intelligence are also making a number of jobs redundant that in turn is impacting hiring at IT firms.