IBM Head Count In India Tops 50,000

The technology company's Indian workforce now stands at 53,000, up from 39,000 a year ago and 23,000 two years ago. If the current growth rate continues, IBM will have more than 70,000 workers in India in 2007—almost 25% of its current worldwide workforce of 300,000 or more than 50% of its U.S. employee head count of 130,000.

IBM workers in India are engaged in everything from routine coding to high-end system design. A year ago, the company made the decision to consolidate all development of software for service-oriented architectures in the Indian tech hub of Bangalore.

But IBM isn't looking at India just as a source of cheap IT labor. The country also represents a big growth market for a company whose sales have been relatively flat for the past several quarters. IBM said Wednesday that sales in India increased 37% year over year in 2006, making the country its fastest growing geographical market.

IBM isn't the only major Western tech services vendor ramping up in India. Earlier this week, Accenture officials said the company will have more employees in India than in the United States by August, when it plans to increase its Indian complement of workers to 35,000. Accenture has about 30,000 workers in the United States.