No short-term impact of H-1B visa fee hike, future resourcing plans will change: Tata Tech CEO
Tata Technologies CEO Warren Harris said the steep US H-1B visa fee hike will not affect the company immediately, due to its locally staffed global model. He expects future resourcing shifts, while aerospace growth offsets tariff-related automotive slowdowns, boosting quarterly performance
New Delhi: The fee hike for the US H-1B visa by the Donald Trump administration has no short-term impact on Tata Technologies Ltd, although it will change resourcing plans for the future, according to its CEO and Managing Director, Warren Harris.
The global product engineering and digital services firm, by virtue of its staffing architecture, which has about 70 per cent of its employees in any country coming from that nationality, is less exposed to visa issues than other “Indian competitors that are India out”, Harris said.
“We are not an India-out company. We were very much a global company, with the majority of our employees in different territories who were nationals of those countries. We have Americans running our US operation. We have the Chinese team running our China operation, unlike many of our Indian competitors that are India-out. They are much more exposed to visas,” he said.
Harris was responding to a query on the implications of the hike in the annual H-1B visa fees to US$ 100,000 announced in September by Trump. “We are cognizant of the challenge,” he added.
Harris further said, “It will certainly change our resourcing plans for the future, but there is no short-term impact associated with the H-1B decisions that the United States has made.” As of the September quarter of this fiscal year, Tata Technologies had a global workforce of 12,402.
“We are present in 18 different geographies. One of the principles around which we’ve architected the company is that we want about 70 per cent of employees in any country to come from that nationality or region. That is what underpins the type of special relationship that we have with our customers, and it is through that we leverage the engine that we built here in India,” he noted.
When asked about the US tariff situation and its impact, he said, “At the beginning of the fiscal year, when the tariffs were announced, it prompted many of our customers to revisit their product plans.
“Not only did they need to look at the products themselves and the viability of the products against the backdrop of the tariffs, but they also needed to look at their supply chains. I think what we’ve seen is that reset of strategies and plans is now largely played out.”
He further said, “The customers that we were expecting to work to make decisions at the beginning of the fiscal year are now making those decisions.” It has helped improve the company’s performance in the second quarter, Harris said, adding that its aerospace vertical has been essentially immune to the slowdown in automotive and the tariffs, and has thereby continued to grow.
“We expect another year where our aerospace business will double in size this year, and we’ve seen that continue to play out in the second quarter, and we fully expect that will continue in Q3 and Q4,” he said without elaborating on the current size of the aerospace business.
Tata Technologies had reported a 5.14 per cent rise in consolidated profit after tax to Rs 165.5 crore in the second quarter ended September 30, 2025, compared to Rs 157.41 crore in the corresponding period last fiscal.
Its consolidated revenue from operations in the quarter stood at Rs 1,323.33 crore, as against Rs 1,296.45 crore in the year-ago period.
