Bangalore: Wipro would hire 50 percent of employees for its global IT services outside India by 2015 to leverage local talent and optimally utilise its delivery centres worldwide, a top company official said Friday.

"We hope to take our global hiring for IT services to 50 percent in the next two-three years from 38 percent this fiscal (2011-12) and 31 percent last fiscal," Wipro chairman Azim Premji told reporters here.

With a net addition of 5,004 people in the third quarter (Oct-Dec) of this fiscal, the IT services business has 136,734 techies as against 131,730 a quarter ago and 119,491 a year ago.

Admitting that lateral hiring was difficult due to acute shortage of skilled engineers in the US and Europe, especially Britain, Premji said while fresh graduates were available for recruiting locally, the company was deputing many of its Indian techies to its overseas locations for onsite projects.

"Though we are able to hire freshers from campuses, we are finding it tough to recruit laterals as there is an acute shortage of skilled engineers in the US and Britain. Besides, it is expensive and competitive," Premji said.

The company's global IT business caters to 150 global Fortune 500 clients across financial services, retail, transportation, manufacturing, healthcare services, energy and utilities, technology, telecom and media.