Infosys to hire over 20,000 freshers in FY26, says CFO

Representative image

Infosys Chief financial officer (CFO) Jayesh Sanghrajka on January 16 said that the IT services major will be hiring over 20,000 freshers in the financial year 2026, signaling demand recovery and revival of discretionary spending in several sectors.

Sanghrajka added that the company is on track to reach its FY25 target of hiring around 15,000 freshers. This is in contrast to rival HCLTech, which had slashed its fresher hiring target to 7,000 from 10,000 earlier, driven by increased efficiency and productivity measures, such as Project Ascend.

Infosys has hired 5,591 employees in the third quarter ended December 31. This will be the second consecutive quarter of net headcount addition for the company after seeing a slowdown for six quarter prior to that.

Speaking on the company’s overall hiring plans for the upcoming quarters, Salil Parekh, CEO and MD, Infosys said, “We have had strong hiring in Q3, with expansion of over 5,000 employees. We see (hiring) based on some our discretionary (spending), this will continue. But this will have seasonality as we see in our revenue.”

After deferring wage hike cycle to Q4, the company will also start compensation review from January and a second phase of it in April.

Sanghrajka said, “We don't define exact compensation hike impact on margins, but there will be some headwinds from this in Q1 and Q4. Will give 6-8% hikes in India, and overseas will be in line with earlier reviews.”

Meanwhile, rival Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) lost 5,370 employees in Q3 after two consecutive quarters of net addition; and HCLTech reversed its trend of previous quarter by adding 2,134 employees.

Infosys reported its Q3 earnings. The company's net profit rose 11.4 percent year-on-year, beating Street estimates, to Rs 6,806 crore. According to a Moneycontrol poll of nine brokerages, the IT major's Q3FY25 profit was pegged at Rs 6,734 crore and revenue at Rs 41,206 crore.

Infosys revenue from operations rose 7.5 percent to Rs 41,764 crore in Q3FY25 as compared to Rs 38,821 crore in Q3FY24.

Infosys also raised its CC revenue growth guidance for FY25 to 4.5-5% for the third quarter in a row, as against its previous guidance of 3.75-4.5%.