Multinational IT firms who are now leveraging the India offshore model to deliver value to their customers are planning to hire over 13,000 professionals in the next 12 months, CRIS INFAC, a business research firm of CRISIL, said on Tuesday.

"The foreign majors currently have a strength of about 12,000, while they are expecting to touch over 25,000 in the next one year," CRIS INFAC research head Sabhin Mathur told reporters in Bangalore.

Global IT service majors like IBM, Accenture and EDS have already indicated that they are hiring professionals in India, to help being competitive with the offshoring advantage.

Presenting an overview of the 'Indian Software Industry: Moving into the next orbit', Mathur said the foreign software firms may be hiring rapidly, but it would not have much impact on the domestic companies.

"It is too small a hiring for these majors to make an impact, as many of the big domestic IT firms have staff strength more than that of the foreign majors," he said.

Mathur said the global IT vendors faced a huge challenge in offshoring due to change in business environment and may not hurt domestic firms in volumes, but in margins.

The Indian IT services industry during 2003-04, he said, would export $9 billion worth software, but added, that it had a potential of earning $44 billion in software exports over the next few years.