Infosys played down concerns about cost pressures from a plan to hire 10,000 US workers and boost its on-the-ground US presence, saying it will enable faster deployment of staff in newer, more profitable projects in areas like big data and cloud.

The India-based IT services firm this week said it plans the hirings over the next two years and that it will open four US technology centers. The move comes as Indian outsourcing firms have become political targets in the United States and have been accused of displacing US workers' jobs by flying in foreigners on temporary visas to service US clients.

While some analysts have said the plans will raise Infosys's cost burden and impact its margins, deputy chief operating officer Ravi

Kumar said it would make India's second-biggest software services company nimbler.

"Training in the US is obviously going to be more expensive than training in India, but as we ramp up significantly in the next few months this model is much more agile," said Kumar in a telephone interview from New York late on Wednesday.

"It (hiring locally) gives us agility, it gives us speed and it gives us local cultural alignment, " said Kumar. He did not say how much Infosys will be spendingon the plan.

Infosys is keen to automate a big chunk of its legacy business such as routine infrastructure maintenance work for clients, and focus instead on transformational work in areas such as digital services, cloud, data analytics and cyber security that offer much better margins, said Kumar.