IT company to open Wilmington location in March

When Harry Virk, owner of Alpha Technologies, bought 704 King St. in August for the IT services company, the reason was personal.
“To me, in my opinion, this country gave me everything, and I want to give back to this country,” he said.
Bugged by the number of American companies offshoring jobs, Virk is aiming to keep IT jobs local by hiring people to work at the new office, where there will be a ribbon-cutting March 10. He’s now vetting college grads and IT veterans alike to train and hire.
“There are thousands and thousands of talented people in America, and here we are shipping jobs offshore,” he said.

Virk first came to the United States from India as a student at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark. He started Alpha Technologies in a room out of an apartment, with one employee, in 1997. Today he has offices in Doylestown, Raleigh, Poland and India, and they employ a couple hundred people, he said.
“My goal is, if it all works out, with the next five years, we’ll have 400 to 500 people working in this building,” Virk said, referring to the new Wilmington location. “We are going to grow.”
The employees working out of Doylestown, he noted, will also be moving to the King Street office.
Alpha Technologies specializes in all things IT, including application support, software development, staff augmentation, system integration, infrastructure maintenance, data center maintenance and relocation services, GAP analysis and corporate governance.
Virk said he initially considered building a new location in New Jersey but encountered too many roadblocks. Wilmington, however, was a different experience.
“The credit goes to people from the mayor’s office, the governor’s office and DEDO — those people really helped us a lot,” Virk said. “I’m thankful to the state of Delaware.”
He will get $180,000 from the state and $200,000 in city wage tax abatements, along with some property tax incentives, if he reaches his hiring goals, according to the Delaware Business Times.
Virk acknowledged that sending jobs offshore is cheaper than keeping them local, but said he hopes clients see the value in having IT help in the same time zone and without language barriers. Alpha Technologies, he said, is also providing free transportation — by limo or by plane — for clients to meet with IT specialists when needed.
He’s not only hopeful to gain new clients in Delaware — potential clients, by the way, are invited to the March 10 ribbon-cutting — but he also hopes to make a difference for those in the area who are talented and need jobs. “The most important thing with this venture,” Virk said, “is this is my personal thing I want to do for the United States.”