IT major Cognizant Technology Solutions said on Friday that its development centre in China was expected to get legal status by August-end and the operations would be headed by Henry Yang, a Chinese native.
"We have got on board Henry Yang as country manager for China," R.Chandrasekaran, managing director and executive vice-president of Cognizant, told PTI in Chennai.
The Nasdaq-listed Cognizant, which employs about 11,900 people in India, is also going ahead with the recruitment process for the Chinese operations. The company would train the new recruits (to be hired from China) at its Chennai facility till its Chinese facility gets the legal entity status, he said.
"We are not waiting for getting legal status for the China development centre," to start the recruitment process, Chandrasekharan said. The company hopes to have about 75-100 people at its China facility, located near Shanghai, over a period of one year.
"Our China operations may not be large volume operations. But it would be our second largest location for offshore delivery after India," he said.
Henry Yang, the country manager for China, has over 15 years international experience in the IT industry, including seven years experience with IT companies in the Asia Pacific region, having special focus on China.
Chandrasekharan said about 15-20 per cent of its employees in China would be Indians and a large proportion would be local Chinese.
A senior person from India would be deputed as the integration manager for China. Currently, the China initiative is being handled from India by Sriniketh, manager for corporate development.
"Alongside, we would also bring our local hires in China to India for a period of 2-3 months for a reverse integration exercise, which we believe is critical to 'congnizantise' our operations in China," he said.
Cognizant was very optimistic about China, he said, adding the Chinese centre would cater to its Japanese customers partially, besides supporting some global customers.
"The potential in China is there as the talent pool is very vast and China has more Japanese speaking people than India, which makes it an attractive destination to service our Japanese clients," he said.
However, in terms of cost of operations, China was not cheaper than India, the Cognizant MD said.
A sizeable number of the company's clients in verticals such as manufacturing, banking, insurance and retail, have also evinced interest in outsourcing work to China.
"The projects that we are currently executing are for our existing client with whom we have established a long-standing relationship in the US and Europe," he said.
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