Getting H-1B visa in America is now becoming difficult and very expensive. For this reason Google has changed its plans. Now Google is emphasizing on employing more people in India (especially Bangalore) instead of America and expanding its work here.
Preparation for huge expansion in Bangalore
According to Bloomberg report, Google is building a huge campus in Whitefield, Bangalore, for which its parent company ‘Alphabet’ has taken an entire building on rent and has also kept the option of two more buildings. Spread over about 24 lakh square feet, this huge office will have seating space for 20,000 employees. The special thing is that at present Google has only 14,000 employees in India, but after the opening of this new campus, Google’s team in India will be more than double than before.
Difficulties of H-1B visa and benefits for India
Due to changes and strictness in the immigration rules of America, it has now become very difficult to invite foreign professionals there and provide them work. According to reports, the cost of an H-1B visa can reach up to Rs 84 lakh ($100,000). To avoid these rising expenses and visa delays, companies have changed their strategy. Now instead of calling Indian engineers to America, they are creating big teams in India itself, so that they can continue working with the best talent at lower costs.
Importance of India in AI race
India has now become a global hub not only for small support work but also for cutting-edge technological work like AI. Irina Ghosh, head of Anthropic India, also believes that India has a great opportunity to create AI on a large scale and implement it in the world. This is the reason why along with Google, big companies like Microsoft are also expanding their presence in India. Google has recently started recruitment for senior positions like cloud computing, chip design and advanced research and even YouTube teams are working on new AI tools in India.
Tech boom in statistics
Data from ‘Xpheno’, a staffing firm, shows that in the last one year, leading American companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta have increased their team in India by 16%, which is the highest in the last three years. If we look at this entire change in brief, Google is opening its new campus in Whitefield, Bangalore where there is a possibility of 20,000 new recruitments. Overall, the focus of these companies is now to work on big projects like AI, Cloud and chip design sitting in India.
