Country’s second largest software exporter Infosys recruited nearly 11,900 college graduates in the financial year ended 2024, said CEO and MD Salil Parekh, at a time when the company posted its first ever full-year headcount decline in over two decades.
This is also a significant YoY plunge in campus hiring as the company had hired over 50,000 freshers in FY23.
Infosys’ headcount dropped by 25,994, for the first time in at least 23 years since 2001. Total headcount had stood at 317,000 employees for the full year FY24.
This is coming two days after IT employee union, Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES) had alleged that the company has been “repeatedly delaying onboarding of over 2,000 campus recruits.”
“We recruited nearly 11,900 college graduates in the year and ended the year with over 3,17,000 employees. Our attrition reduced to 12.6%. We trained over 2,50,000 employees on AI skills. Our focus on gender diversity continues with about 39% of our workforce consisting of women employees,” Parekh said in the company’s annual report released on June 3.
As of the fourth quarter ended March 31, Infosys had skipped going for campus hiring for at least the previous three quarters, as it looks to monitor utilisation rates and follow a flexi hiring model.
"We have changed our hiring model significantly. We no more hire all the freshers from campus. We hire less than half of them from campus and more than half of them off campus," chief financial officer Jayesh Sanghrajka had said at the company’s fourth quarter earnings conference in April.
Industry-wide trend
Not just Infosys, rivals including Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Wipro, Tech Mahindra too lost headcount. Together the top 5 Indian IT companies lost around 69,167 employees in FY24, amidst an uncertain demand environment, delays in deal ramp-ups, and cancellations.
Moneycontrol had also reported last week that, there were major industry-wide silent layoffs too in the IT sector in India in 2023 and 2024.
According to data shared by the All India IT & ITeS Employees' Union (AIITEU) exclusively with Moneycontrol, around 20,000 techies lost their jobs in ‘silent’ layoffs in the IT/ITeS sector in India in calendar year 2023. AIITEU believes that the actual number is higher and yet to be reported.
Among IT companies of all sizes, multiple sources had said that Infosys too had let go about 200-500 employees across campuses in 2024, though this has been done by asking them to resign voluntarily. Infosys had denied doing a lay off in a statement.
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