Bangalore: Software major Wipro Ltd, which leveraged India's low-cost high skilled manpower to establish as a major IT powerhouse, now expects competition by firms replicating it's model from countries that have lower wage costs than India.

"We expect that further competition will increase and potentially include companies from other countries that have lower personnel costs than those currently in India," Wipro said in its recent filing to the US Securities Exchange Commission (SEC).

Though the NYSE-listed Wipro did not specify the countries, China and Russia, with a large engineering pool are the potential competing nations.

"A significant part of our competitive advantage has historically been a wage cost advantage relative to companies in the United States and Europe," Wipro said.

"Because wage costs in India are presently increasing at a faster rate than those in the US, our ability to compete effectively will increasingly become dependent on our ability to provide high quality, on-time, complex deliverables that depend on increased expertise in certain technical areas," the Bangalore- based IT major said.

Besides Indian firms like Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services and Satyam, Wipro faces competition from the global IT majors like IBM, Accenture and EDS, who also have India development centres.

PTI