The Hindu Business Line : Visa spend of top 4 cos in Q1 at over $40 m

Their spendings
Infosys spent $11 million (Rs 50 crore) on 3,500 applications.
Tata Consultancy Services applied for about 3,000.
For Satyam Computer Services, the cost was Rs 24 crore.
Wipro does not state numbers, says `hit' on P&L account.

Chennai , Aug. 14

The combined visa expenditure for top four software companies — Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro and Satyam — during the June 2006 quarter was estimated to be over $40 million (around Rs 180 crore), with companies filing the bulk of their visa applications during the quarter, industry sources said.

Infosys spent $11 million (Rs 50 crore) on 3,500 visa applications to various countries, including the US, Mr V. Balakrishnan, Chief Financial Officer, Infosys, said at a recent conference call with analysts to discuss the company's June quarter financial results.

"We had an incremental investment in visas. We made applications for close to 3,500 visas, because we felt that when there is an incremental benefit, we need to reinvest in the business, and that's what we did," he said.

For the whole of 2005-06, Infosys spent Rs 77 crore on visas compared with Rs 38 crore during the previous year, says the company's annual report.

Tata Consultancy Services applied for about 3,000 visas during the quarter, a company official told analysts.

Mr V. Srinivas, Chief Financial Officer, Satyam Computer Services, said the visa cost was Rs 24 crore against Rs 4-5 crore in the last quarter. For the entire yearly requirement, the company would have applied in June quarter, and the visas would be used for the next 12-18 months, he said at a conference call with analysts.

Mr Azim Premji, Chairman, Wipro, without giving any numbers on visa expenditure, told investors, "I think there has been a hit in the profit and loss in the quarter ended in March as well as in June."

Majority of software professionals working abroad, especially in the US, for Indian companies are Indian nationals. Majority of IT professionals in the US hold H-1B or L-1 visas. An H-1B is a temporary work visa, which allows the employee to remain in the US while he or she remains an employee of the sponsoring firm, and the L-1 visa is an intra-company transfer visa, which only allows the employee to remain in the US temporarily.

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