India-Canada row: Start-ups, IT firms to shrug off diplomatic spat

Experts say even if this escalates into protracted diplomatic spat, effect would be modest

- UMA KANNAN

AMID worsening diplomatic ties between India and Canada, experts feel it may not be a cause of concern at the moment for start-ups and IT companies, irrespective of their huge presence in Canada. Top Indian IT services companies have business operations in Canada. Infosys has more than a decade presence in the country.

In July this year, Infosys Public Services (IPS), a North America-based company of Infosys, announced the opening of its new subsidiary, Infosys Public Services Canada, headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario.

The company had said in a statement that the IPS Canada announcement is the latest development in a series of investments made by Infosys which has expanded the employee count to over 7,000 with a commitment to increase to 8,000 employees by 2024. IPS Canada will also work with local universities and technical colleges to recruit talent.

In September 2022, Infosys opened its digital centre in Calgary, Canada, and it said this would bring 1,000 jobs to Calgary over the next two years.

Wipro in January this year opened the Wipro-AWS Launch Pad Centre in Toronto, Canada. While opening the centre, the company had said that Toronto serves as a prime location to enable co-creation across industries given the ongoing technology expansion and investments in the city, which is now the third largest tech hub in North America.

Apart from centres, IT companies have partnered with many Canadian firms.