Forty students from universities around the world have descended on the Infosys campus here for an internship and to get hands-on experience of its business delivery model that has made India's IT bellwether a global software major.

As part of its global internship programme InStep, Infosys provides an opportunity for students from 70 world-class institutes including Carnegie Mellon, Harvard, Wharton, MIT, London Business School to work on projects ranging from application development to business consulting.

Addressing the interns from the US, Canada, Germany, France and Japan in the campus, Infosys Technologies CEO Nandan M. Nilekani said InStep was the largest institutionalised global internship programme of its kind in India.

The programme aims to showcase the technological prowess and business model adopted for sustained growth and expansion.

"For years, Indian students have been going abroad, especially to the US, to do their internship. Now that trend appears to be reversing with an increasing number of students from the world over heading to India to understand our business model and advancements in the tech arena," Nilekani said.

The 40 interns, who made it to the Infosys campus through a rigorous selection process, will spend about eight to 24 weeks to gain first hand experience of the company's practices, including corporate planning, education and research and enterprise solutions.

Cultural backgrounds and language barriers did not make any difference to the interns in opting for Infosys, as the language of IT business is predominantly English.

The 40 students, a majority of them from the US, will go through the internship in the next six months, which includes exposure to Infosys' software development centres and the GDM.

Subsequently, another batch of 60 students from these universities will go through a similar internship. They were selected from about 9,000 applications received this year, against 300 applications for 14 positions six years ago when the InStep programme was launched.

Commenting on the InStep programme, Geoffrey Gelman, an intern from Harvard Business School, said there had been a debate in the US on the growing role of India in the world economy.

"I wanted to investigate this trend first hand and gain international experience by working at a leading IT company headquartered in India. I am excited to be here as it gives me an opportunity to learn how Infosys has emerged as a global software major," Gelman said.