India's IT sector reports hiring growth amid COVID pandemic

India's IT sector has reported a hiring growth in almost all regions after the May lockdown. According to Naukri's JobSpeak report, the industry which saw an uptick in attrition rates due to a war for talent in the sector as cities such as Hyderabad (+10%), Pune (+10%), and Bengaluru (+4%) saw an uptrend in hiring.

The report says that tech hiring has remained relatively insular to the effects of the pandemic which is seen as an impact of rapid digitisation of Indian organisations. The report added that apart from IT sector's recent surge of 14% in May'21, it has also achieved an all-time high growth of 52%, as compared to pre-COVID levels in June'19.

Several companies had frozen hiring in early FY21 due to the lockdown, but now many have announced hiring targets for fresh graduates in this financial year.

In June, industry body NASSCOM had said that the industry had added 1.38 lakh people in FY21 and that the top-five IT companies alone had plans to hire over 96,000 employees in FY22. Staffing firm Xpheno, in a recent report, stated that Indian IT services companies, start-ups, and product companies are looking at hiring 70,000 people across just six roles.

Tata Consultancy Services, which kicked off the earnings season this quarter, saw its workforce go up 17.3% year-on-year in the first quarter, and also saw its highest-ever quarterly net headcount addition of 20,409. Attrition was picking up, and like the others, TCS, too, expects it to go up in the following quarters.

The company had earlier reported that it would be hiring 40,000 freshers, primarily in the first and second quarter of FY22. The CEO said the company hired nearly 38,500 people during the quarter.

Chief Human Resources Officer of Tata Consultancy Services Milind Lakkad told media persons that the company had hired 40,000 associates from campuses in India, while it hired 2,000 employees from US campuses in FY21. According to Lakkad,the number of hiring in both is likely to be higher this year.

While Infosys announced that it would be hiring roughly 35,000 graduates in FY22, of which it had already hired 10,000 graduates in the first quarter, Wipro, on the other hand, will be onboarding 33% more freshers in FY22. In the July-September quarter alone, the firm said it intends to onboard over 6,000 freshers, which will be the highest the firm has ever done.

Wipro CHRO Saurabh Govil informed that the company will hire more than 12,000 freshers in FY22. He also added that in FY23, 30,000 offers will be made in FY23 in which 22,000-plus offers will be reserved for freshers

Similarly, Mindtree had added 3,400 people during the quarter while L&T Infotech added 2,300 employees in Q1FY22. InfoTech has stated it will be hiring 1.5 times the number of freshers it hired last year. In FY21, the company hired 3,000 freshers and is looking to add 4,500 freshers in FY22.

HCL Tech, which onboarded 14,600 freshers globally last year is looking at 20,000-22,000 freshers this year . In this quarter alone the company added 6,000 freshers.

Companies such as Capgemini and Genpact are also reportedly looking at increasing hiring. In January, Capgemini CEO Ashwin Yardi had said the company was looking to hire 30,000 people in India in 2021, at 50:50 mix of lateral hires and fresh graduates.