HCLTech was the only company from the top tier to see its workforce reduce by 780 people last quarter largely due to its divestment of a joint venture with US-based State Street.
India’s IT industry had shed a record more than 70,000 employees in FY24. The first quarter of this fiscal year saw a cumulative decline of 1,750 employees.
The turnaround in employee addition tracks healthy deal wins in the first two quarters of FY25 amid a recovery in demand. Companies temporarily halted fresh hirings or trimmed headcount amid tepid business growth for four to five quarters after the pandemic-induced runaway peak growth momentum.
The top four firms bagged around 33 deals in July and August, ET reported last month.
“They (companies) expect upticks in their order books and are building a pipeline of talent ready to take up the new projects that need the new-age skills,” said Aditya Narayan Mishra, managing director at recruitment firm CIEL HR Services.
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Tech Mahindra, the fifth largest IT company, led fresh hires in the September quarter, adding 6,653 employees. This was followed by TCS, the country’s largest IT company, which added 5,726 employees to its over 600,000-strong workforce.Infosys and Wipro, the second and fourth-largest IT firms, made net additions of 2,456 and 978 employees during the quarter, respectively.
Bengaluru-headquartered Infosys expanded its workforce after six straight quarters. Managements at Infosys and Wipro said they will also be onboarding college recruits, pending from 2022 and 2023.
“Companies have utilised their bench strength to the maximum possible and made significant progress in deploying automation in their work processes. Now, they are preparing themselves for the future by building the talent pipeline and equipping them with the newest skills,” Mishra said.
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The companies secured new deals in the first three quarters of 2024 though at a slower pace. TCS won deals with a total contract value (TCV) of $8.6 billion, Infosys’s large deals came in at $2.4 billion, while HCLTech and Wipro’s deal wins stood at $2.2 billion and $2.4 billion, respectively.
“Our focus really is making sure that if you look at all of H1, those are converted and are already into delivery mode,” Infosys chief Salil Parekh said in a post-results conference.
“We anticipate the strong deal wins of the last few quarters to gradually convert into revenue in coming quarters, even as interest rate cuts revives discretionary spends,” Nuvama Institutional Equities said in a report.
Financial services, a key vertical for most IT firms, remained the biggest contributor to the industry’s revenue in the September quarter on the back of a pick-up in technology spending. Most firms expect this trend to continue.
“We’ll continue to hire freshers in the coming quarters, including Q3. Now for other lateral intake from the market, we’ll decide based on the market situation,” said Milind Lakkad, chief human resource officer (CHRO) at TCS, which has projected to add about 40,000 freshers in FY25.
The top four firms said they are on track to achieve their committed total fresher additions of 82,000 this fiscal year.
Earlier this month, ET reported that the IT sector is estimated to surpass 150,000 fresher hires in FY25 after FY24 saw the lowest intake of freshers in the IT sector since 2000. Overall hiring is also expected to pick up by 10-12% in the fiscal second half starting this month.
