New U.S. Visa Rules Can’t Take Away TCS’ Competitive Edge, Says CEO
TCS CEO termed the notion of underpaying employees as ‘complete nonsense.’
Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. (TCS) has been reducing its dependence on H-1B visas as it continues to diversify its business model, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Rajesh Gopinathan told BloombergQuint in an interview.
His comments came after U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to review the H-1B visa program to favour more skilled and higher paid applicants. TCS is one the biggest recipients of the visas, which are mainly used by technology companies.
Also Read: Trump Moves to Realign Visa Allotments Key to Tech Outsourcing
Despite these stringent norms, the competitiveness of the company will not change, the CEO said.
It is a journey that we have been on and it is a reflection of our business model migration. The underlying thing is that as a company, we are compliant with every jurisdiction that we operate in and our ask is that the regulation should be fair, transparent and even.Rajesh Gopinathan, MD And CEO, TCS
Gopinathan accepted that TCS has benefited from the U.S.’ ‘open competitive’ environment, managing to beat some of the best in business and establish its presence in the world’s biggest economy.
Impact On Wage Bill
TCS also refuted claims that the company uses H1-B visas to keep the wage bill lower. Gopinathan said the company's low attrition rate just goes to prove that it is a good pay master.
We pay as per market norms or even better than market norms. The fact that we have the lowest attrition in a highly supply constrained environment, the facts of the case suggest that this is complete nonsense.Rajesh Gopinathan, MD And CEO, TCS
Shares of TCS were trading marginally lower by 0.8 percent at Rs 2,289 as of 11:38 a.m. The company's profit for the January-March quarter fell 2.8 percent on a sequential basis despite the growth of its cloud and digital business.
NASSCOM Unperturbed
Meanwhile, industry body NASSCOM said that they had no problems with the objectives outlined by President Trump in the executive order, as long as it was not applied selectively on certain companies.
NASSCOM also said that they will be constructive in engaging with the Trump administration.