India's largest IT services companies Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro saw a staggering 64,000 employees exiting in FY24, amid a weak demand environment globally and tighter tech spends by clients.
"Our utilisation rate has improved from 77 per cent utilisation including trainees in the beginning of the year. The growth environment was also very different at that point so we had guided differently," said Jayesh Sanghrajka, CFO, Infosys, as the company reported its fourth-quarter results on Thursday.
Announcing Infosys Topaz and Intel collaboration to accelerate enterprise growth and efficiency with Generative AI, the release said the expanded partnership will help "democratise" AI by bringing open standards in AI hardware and software stack across edge, core, and cloud computing.
However, despite this increase in active hiring, there has been a 4-6% quarter-on-quarter decline in collective gross hiring by these companies in the quarter ending March, states an ET report. This analysis was conducted by staffing firm Xpheno based on talent movement patterns in the January-March period, focusing on major companies like Wipro, Infosys, TCS, HCL, LTI Mindtree, L&T Technology Services, Tech Mahindra, and Cognizant.
The Bengaluru-headquartered company will declare a few important weeks in every quarter as In-Person Collab Weeks. “All of us are required to be in office during these weeks,” according to an internal email sent to employees, reviewed by ET.
Launching its annual TCS national qualifier test (NQT) exclusively for students graduating in the year 2024, the Tata group’s IT bellwether has called engineers and computer graduates to apply for Ninja and Digital fresher hiring, TCS’ aptitude and coding tests. The last date for application is April 10 and tests will be conducted on April 26.
The firm has been grappling with sluggish demand for its IT and consulting services as high interest rates slam the brakes on an industry that benefited from breakneck growth during the pandemic.
The water crisis in Bengaluru presents a daunting challenge exacerbated by rapid urbanisation and population growth, and it is impacting households as also the IT and tech hubs' operations, say city residents who are facing stringent water restrictions.
The increments will, however, likely be deferred by most companies to the end of the fiscal first quarter, Munira Loliwala, AVP - strategy and growth, Teamlease Digital, told ET. In normal times, salary hikes tend to happen from April.
India's IT sector may miss its target of doubling its workforce to 10 million by 2030 due to a slump in demand for tech services and the threat of AI-induced job losses. The industry currently employs 5.4 million workers, but this could only reach 7.5 million by 2030.
Though they have shunned mass campus recruitments, some top IT firms are planning to enter the job market in anticipation of a growth pickup in the second half of the next fiscal year that starts in April. The early starters will have an advantage with access and cost of top-quality talent, especially in areas such as cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and cloud computing, where there is a huge skill gap currently, staffing firm experts and recruiters said.
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