Microsoft India going easy on hiring this season

Microsoft India, wholly-owned subsidiary of world's biggest software firm, is going easy on hiring this year and will instead focus on consolidation, its country head said on Monday.

"There will be no significant hiring," Microsoft India chairman and corporate vice-president Ravi Venkatesan told reporters on the sidelines of the India Economic Summit in New Delhi.

Microsoft, which has a headcount of 5,300 people in the country, had hired 'a few hundreds' last year.

Most of the top domestic and transnational companies go for campus placements from the engineering and management schools around October-December.

Venkatesan said "(Steve) Barmer (global CEO) has gone on record saying this is a period of consolidation," rather than adding to the headcount.

The $58-billion global software leader has six business units in India, which include research centre, development centres and sales and marketing divisions.

The company, which boasts of running most of the personal computers worldwide on its operating system, has three centres in Hyderabad.

The other units are in Bangaluru and Gurgaon.

Asked about the response to the Microsoft's latest version of the operating system Windows 7, Venkatesan said, "We are seeing very good early response".

While the global launch of the much-hyped operating system Windows 7 was on October 22, the company started shipping it to India in the first week of this month. But it had about 1,000 pre-launch installations.

"Today this number is close to 2,000. The consumer response has been very positive and favourable but its early days," Venkatesan said, adding in the next 30 days, 100 different models of laptops and PCs loaded with Windows 7 would hit the Indian market.

The company's previous operating system Windows Vista did not get good response from the users.

Venkatesan said the issue of customs holding the Windows 7 consignments has been resolved and the product should be now shipped without much difficulty.

"Hopefully, our exporters have been able to clear the shipments," he said.

The windows 7 consignments were held at customs because of tax dispute leading to a possible double tax.

The issue related to the same software product being taxed twice -- once as a goods and again as service. The Central Board of Excise and Customs has taken the corrective action.