Infosys brings back 200 employees, their families from US via Chartered Flight; vacates its largest international market

The company brought these people back from San Francisco via a special chartered flight that landed in Bengaluru on Monday morning. “Infosys chartered flight took off from SFO (San Francisco) last night bringing hundreds of employees and families home to Bangalore,” Infosys Associate Vice President – Retail, CPG and Logistics Samir Gosavi said in a LinkedIn post.

According to sources, 206 individuals, including Infosys employees and their family members, were brought back.

These individuals were stranded in the US after international flights were suspended following the coronavirus virus outbreak and the resultant lockdown, a person said.

The employees were a mix of those working on client sites as well some who had travelled to the US for some meeting or event, another person said.

Few days before the IT firm Infosys took the step to bring back its employees, the US President Donald Trump suspended temporary work permits, such as the H1B and H4 visas, till the end of this year. Donald Trump’s order has barred thousands of people from getting employed or joining work-study programmes in the US. The order has also restricted American companies from hiring foreigners and blocked spouses of foreigners working in the US from entering the country.

Among Infosys’ international markets, the United States holds the largest share of 61.6 per cent of the company’s revenue. Even as the IT firm increased hiring US locals due to uncertainty in the US policies, many Indian employees work in the US on H1-B visas. Infosys has hired over 10,000 US nationals or permanent residents in the last two years. In the recent virtual annual general meeting (AGM), U B Pravin Rao, chief operating officer, Infosys, said that at present, 60 per cent of Infosys’ US employees are visa independent.

The city-based $12.7-billion IT behemoth employs 2.4 lakh employees in 46 countries the world over.