Tata Consultancy to Open Minneapolis Software Center

Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., India’s largest software company by sales, plans to open a software center in Minneapolis this year, its latest bid to blunt criticism that Indian outsourcers are bleeding off American jobs.

The company leased 50,000 square feet in a tower in suburban Bloomington, and plans to open a 300-employee office there, the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal reported in May. It said the office would open this summer, though summer is nearly over.

The new office will serve large national clients, according to the Journal, though those clients have not been named. Best Buy, Target and Allianz Life Insurance are among the area’s big employers that have used Tata services in the past. Best Buy, though, has added 200 IT workers to its payroll and Target is trying to hire more than 300.

Tata has said it will add 2,000 local jobs in the United States at its software centers, which already employ 3,000. Its other centers are in Cincinnati; Midland, Mich.; Phoenix and Milwaukee. Critics, though, say those jobs don’t necessarily go to U.S. citizens.

In Cincinnati, the company has pledged to add 1,000 positions this year to qualify for a tax credit package offered by the state of Ohio. It’s only halfway to that hiring goal, though, according to the Business Courier.

Other Indian outsourcers, including InfoSys, MindTree and Wipro, also are hiring in the United States, The Wall Street Journal says, delving into the political mudslinging over outsourcing that’s part of the U.S. presidential campaign.

My colleague Don Tennant has been covering a whistleblower’s claims of retaliation by Infosys for his allegations that the company has been involved in visa and tax fraud.

And it’s not clear that the U.S. hiring is creating good will as the outsourcers had planned. My post at Dice.com about American icon Harley-Davidson moving some IT work to Infosys set off a storm of protests from readers.