Houston-based Weaver (IPA Top 100 #31 with a mere $328 million in revenue) has been busy in India. According to Houston Business Journal, they’re about to get busier:
Weaver opened three offices in India in January and will open its fourth location in the country this month. The company has about 165 employees in India, representing about 10% of its current total workforce. Weaver plans to double that proportion to 20% in the coming years, CEO John Mackel said.
The Houston firm began considering an international expansion four years ago to have greater access to low-cost labor, a strategy competitors have employed for years, Mackel said.
Nice to see the real reason why firms are doing this front and center in a business publication for once. Usually there’s a paragraph or two about the so-called accountant shortage, so rarely do you see a tacit admission that they did it because it’s cheap.
The firm currently has offices in the Indian cities of Kochi, Coimbatore, Bengaluru, and Chennai.
As mentioned in the headline, Weaver is keeping the partner track open for India staff. “We feel like if people perform well, they deserve those opportunities,” said COO David Rook, the Vasco da Gama of Weaver’s India expedition. “That career path will go a long way in retaining people,” he told HBJ. “We don’t want the India team just to be doing the lower-skilled tasks; we want to develop them like we develop the U.S. employees.”
Remember just a few years ago we were all like haha wouldn’t it be WILD to have senior managers in India!? like that was the most absurd thing you could imagine? Now they’re talking about making them partners.
