Mumbai: High-tech Indian companies like Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro Technologies are increasingly outsourcing or local talent hunting. These firms have been hiring Americans as part of their long-term growth strategy.

Officials at TCS, India`s largest outsourcing firm, and Wipro, another major Indian technology provider, say this has nothing to do with periodic outcries that Indians are taking away jobs from Americans.

"This is not something new. We have had US citizens as employees for quite a number of years," said Michael Mccabe, TCS` director corporate communications for North America.

"The US is by far our largest single market and therefore is integral to our long-term growth strategy," he said.

The North American market contributed $2 billion to the company`s $4.3 billion revenue in the fiscal 2007, he noted.

"All our efforts are geared towards serving our customers in the best way possible and ensuring that they continue to experience certainty in our ability to deliver the results we promise," he said.

"We are likely the most diverse of the Indian IT firms. At the end of this last fiscal year, we had close to 10 per cent non-Indian nationals as employees," Mccabe said, noting that their number had risen from 3.5 per cent in 2005 to 6.5 per cent in 2006.

"They play a variety of roles at the company from sales to consulting to IT services to marketing and communications," Mccabe said, citing his own example.

TCS hires those who are fresh out of US universities as well as lateral hires, he said.

TCS, meanwhile, announced a partnership with the department of electrical engineering, IIT Bombay, for establishing a new initiative called ''PowerAnser Labs'' (PAL).

PAL will focus on using technology to deliver online network analysis and decision support tools to help power utilities and grid operators access in-depth analysis at all times, a TCS statement said.

The lab will create and maintain the network data in such a way that the end user has to only logon online from anywhere and run various scenarios on the grid data.