A group of influential lawmakers have introduced a bipartisan legislation in the US Senate to comprehensively overhaul the H-1B and L-1 visa programmes and usher in more transparency in the recruitment of foreign workers. The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise. Technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China.
The US has announced that individuals travelling to the country on a business or tourist visa - B-1 and B-2 - can apply for new jobs and even appear in interviews, but the prospective employees must ensure that they have changed their visa status before starting a new role. B-1 and B-2 visas are generally referred to as "B visas", and they are the most common types of visa issued for a wide range of uses in the United States. The B-1 visa is issued mainly for short-term business trips, while the B-2 visa is issued mainly travelling for tourism purposes.
"This is something to be proud of," said Raj Panjabi, who is currently serving as Senior Director for Global Health Security and Biodefence on the White House National Security Council.
India will be one of the 13 countries to host the mega launch of the much-awaited Windows 10, the latest version of the popular operating system.
Bill Gates specifically complimented India's Aadhaar identity system and the country's performance in the financial services and pharma sectors.
'I was amazed at how tasty it was.' 'They did a good job with millets and lentils, which Mr Modi liked.'
In a significant push to popularise cricket in the US, a $120 million funding has been secured from prominent Indian-American business leaders, including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, to launch the first professional T20 league in the US. Major League Cricket (MLC), the first professional Twenty20 Cricket League in the US, announced Thursday that it has completed an initial close of a $44 million Series A and A1 Fundraising Round led by a group of America's leading business leaders. It said that with an additional commitment of $76 million in further fundraising over the next 12 months in place, MLC plans to deploy more than $120 million to launch the country's first-ever professional T20 league.
The development comes amid Japan's SoftBank booking an investment loss of 39.28 billion yen (USD 350 million) on its investments in India, including those in Ola and e-commerce company Snapdeal.
Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella along with Alphabet Inc and its subsidiary Google CEO Sundararajan Pichai are also among those from trade and industry who have been awarded the Padma Bhushan for their distinguished services.
As Microsoft ends support for its Windows XP next month, the software giant said a number of ATMs are yet to upgraded and such cash vending machine may face security risk.
Are the big five using their dominance to shut out rivals? That is the key question, says Prosenjit Datta.
The US is planning to resume the process of domestic visa revalidation in certain categories, like H-1B and L1 visas, on a pilot basis later this year, a move that will benefit tens of thousands of foreign tech workers, particularly from India. Until 2004, certain categories of non-immigrant visas, particularly the H-1B, could be renewed or stamped inside the US. After that, for the renewal of these visas, in particular, those on H-1B, the foreign tech workers have to go out of the country, mostly to their own country to get the H-1B extension stamped on their passport.
Reliance Jio, together with partners, has tested its 5G solutions in India, successfully demonstrating speeds of over 1 GBPS, and its 'Made in India' solution is "globally competitive", RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani said on Thursday. Ambani also exuded confidence that the company will be the first to launch full-fledged 5G services in the country. Jio is not just working to make India '2G-mukt' (free from 2G) but also '5G-yukt' (5G empowered), he added. Jio's engineers have developed a 100 per cent home-grown and comprehensive 5G solution that is fully cloud native, software defined, and digitally managed.
The group has called for a retaliatory tariff action against India, if New Delhi does not roll back the 'unilateral and discriminatory' equalisation levy or Google Tax.
Micromax is at second spot in smartphone sales.
Later, he joined Ericsson India where he handled corporate affairs and communication.
With the 21 unicorns collectively valued at $73.2 billion, India is the fourth biggest in terms of unicorns, behind the US, China and the UK, as per the Hurun Global Unicorn List.
Should we not be creating roles in India for the talented, asks Ajit Balakrishnan.
Joe Biden's B3W proposal aims to bring democracies together. India should come up with its own plans to contribute to the initiative, states Rahul Mishra.
In order to determine whether this would be sound strategy for them, one needs to look at two issues: One, on the alliances being built globally between telcos, on one hand, and cloud service firms, on the other, especially with the advent of 5G; and two, how their business strategies in India will blend into with such a deal.
Microsoft Research India's MD Sriram Rajamani tells Alnoor Peermohamed & Raghu Krishnan how India can reap the benefits of the changing industry.
Cyber-security in India is at a nascent stage.
A business in India wanting access to maps and geospatial data would typically have to wait months before it got what it wanted. All this is set to change with the new guidelines on geospatial data, report Neha Alawadhi and Peerzada Abrar.
The attack is not focused towards any particular industry but it is widely spread across industries
Employee costs for Indian IT services players have touched an all-time high as salaries soar in their effort to retain talent. Engineer salaries are going through the roof. According to a news report, Infosys, which reported a 27.7 per cent attrition rate for the fourth quarter of FY22, plans to have an average salary hike of 12-13 per cent. High potential employees will get increases of 22-23 per cent.
India's willingness to play a big role in the manufacturing and to allow some of those vaccines to go to other developing countries will be an absolutely critical part of containing the pandemic, said Gates.
Companies today are taking a very fashionable way to reduce their workforce. Instead of the outright firing of employees, an alternative approach that some companies are using is the passive-aggressive method which is both deliberate and accidental, points out corporate lawyer Ishanee Sharma.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday met Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates on the sidelines of the climate summit here and discussed ways to further sustainable development, steps to mitigate climate change and vaccine research. The meeting between Modi and the American business magnate, whose foundation is focusing on fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, took place after the former launched the Initiative for the Resilient Island States (IRIS) for developing infrastructure of small island nations. Prime Minister Modi expressed appreciation for the work being done by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in India, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in a statement.
Eleven start-ups completed a programme launched by Gennext Ventures.
Some believe that, as prime minister, Sunak will be particularly friendly to India and that he would return the Kohinoor and do similar gestures to his motherland. Such wishful thinking is not likely to materialise as he will act in the best interests of the UK and will not even appear to favour India, argues Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
Users, however, can still make free Skype-to-Skype calls worldwide and international calls to mobiles and landlines.
Indian and Finnish finance ministry officials on Tuesday discussed Nokia's Rs 21,153 crore (Rs 211.53 billion) tax dispute case and reviewed the double taxation avoidance agreement.
An additional criterion in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) may require digital businesses to secure approval from the Competition Commission of India (CCI), the anti-trust regulator. The government is set to introduce a minimum threshold "transaction value" of Rs 2,000 crore (around $250 million) for any deal as a criterion for notification to the anti-trust regulator if the entity being acquired has substantial operations in India. The new criterion is learnt to be part of the proposed amendments to the two-decade-old Competition law, which is expected to be tabled in the ongoing monsoon session of Parliament.
With over 1.7 million vacant cloud computing jobs, the future is bright for candidates with the right skills and experience, says Bhavesh Goswami, founder and CEO, CloudThat Technologies.
Xi will later head for New York to attend the UN General Assembly session.
Breakthrough comes when you can innovate and produce a new product.
While the tax holiday for the factory coming to an end might be a factor, many say the business model of Microsoft (which acquired Nokia's handset division last year), as well as freebies offered by the Vietnamese government, might also have played a role.
In a move that could help the Indian government to bridge the digital divide in the country, Microsoft Corporation has offered to provide tools for language-based computing
$47.6 bn capital invested across 921 deals in India in 2020, despite pandemic.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances