Americans Not as High-Tech as Indians: Wipro CEO
Published: Thursday, 14 Oct 2010 | 12:00 PM ET
By: Michelle Lodge
Special to CNBC.com
American workers are at a competitive disadvantage because they lack the technical education to compete with Indian workers, Azim Premji, chairman, CEO and managing director of Wipro Limited, told CNBC Thursday.
“The fundamental root has to be corrected through the education system, both at the high school level and the college level,” said Premji, whose $6 billion company is in 50 countries and has a market cap of $36 billion. Premji is a native of India who was educated at Stanford University.
The company is in financial services, IT, retail and transportation.
Because of that lack in education, Wipro brings Indian workers to work in the United States.
“The US has not invested in technical education. As a result, there is not adequate inflow of talent, people with technical background or a technical passion for work, and that fundamental thing has to be corrected because more and more products are getting much more technology intensive, more IT intensive, both hardware and software,” he added.
“The mental gap we are facing is not only in the United States, we are facing it in Europe fairly extensively.”
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