IT firms on hiring spree

Top 4 IT companies made net addition of 36,000 employees in Q3

Bengaluru: ­Indian IT services providers are back on the hiring mode as large deals bagged in the recent quarters push up demand for techies. In the quarter ended December, the top four Indian IT firms - Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, HCL Technologies and Wipro - made a net addition of about 36,000 employees, which is more than double that of the recruitment done in the previous quarter. In the preceding quarter, the headcount of these top four IT services firms increased by 17,079.

"As IT firms bagged many numbers of large deals, the demand for human resources has gone up in the recent quarters. That is being reflected in the hiring numbers during the December quarter," said V Balakrishnan, Chairman of Exfinity Venture Partners and former Chief Financial Officer and board member at Infosys.

Indian IT firms bagged a minimum of nine large deals in the first nine months of the current financial year. Wipro has bagged a $700-million digital and IT partnership contract with Metro AG as part of which it will take over the IT units of Metro AG - Metro-Nom GMBH in Germany and Metro Systems Romania S.R.L. of the German wholesaler.

Similarly, Infosys has bagged its largest-ever outsourcing deal worth around $3.2 billion from German automotive major Daimler this month. Under the contract, Infosys will undertake a massive infrastructure overhaul of the German firm. Market leader Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) acquired certain assets and employees of Pramerica Systems Ireland from insurance firm Prudential Financial Inc in November this year.

Apart from these large deals, increased offshoring amid the Covid pandemic has improved the demand outlook for the Indian IT industry.

"The current number for hiring shows the confidence among Indian IT firms for future growth. When most of the big IT firms are expecting double-digit growth in the coming financial year, they need to have enough people to execute the new projects. So, the current hiring is aligned to the future growth expectations of the companies," Pareekh Jain, an IT analyst and founder of Pareekh Consulting. He also said that the current hiring momentum is better than the pre-Covid period with specific skill sets in demand.

On the back of rising digitisation and migration to the cloud, enterprises globally are shifting more work to Indian IT companies. Cost pressure owing to the economic slump is another factor driving this tread. In this perspective, experts opined that staffers with digital skill sets are more in demand in recent times.