Wipro’s headcount increases by 337 in Q1, reverses decline after six quarters

Wipro will be completing onboarding of all of its backlog of offers made in FY25. (Representative image)

IT services major Wipro  added 337 employees in the first quarter ended June 30, 2024. This comes at a time when Wipro is reassessing its lateral and campus hiring models to focus on improving utilisation rate of existing employees amidst lowering attrition, to grow margins.

Total headcount for the quarter stood at 234,391, this is 15,367 fewer employees YoY from Q1FY24 when the headcount was 249,758.

Sequentially, Wipro's attrition rate marginally declined to 14.1 percent on the last-twelve-month (LTM) basis. In Q4, the attrition rate was 14.2 percent.

Wipro has on boarded over 3,000 freshers in Q1 and plans to hire around 10,000-12,000 people in FY25 including on and off campus.

Speaking at the company's Q1 earnings conference on July 19, Saurabh Govil, CHRO, Wipro said, "We are seeing a marginal improvement in headcount. We have started hiring after a year -- on boarding freshers from campus. We on boarded about 3,000 odd people from campus this quarter. We would be on boarding around 10,000-12,000 people this fiscal. We would be completing all our backlogs of offers made this fiscal."

"We will go for hiring on campus and off campus this year. We also plan to hire a similar number next year. Very clearly we are building muscle so that we are there ready as our growth comes back. Our utilisation rate has reached its peak, so this is the right time for us to look at our supply chain," he added.

In Q1, rival Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) added 5,452 employees on a net basis, reversing three straight quarters of decline. Meanwhile, Infosys’ headcount plunged by 1,908 and HCLTech's headcount declined sequentially by 8,080 respectively in Q1FY25.

LTIMindtree was an exception, which added around 284 employees sequentially in Q1.