With attrition hitting 13%, India’s largest IT agency, TCS, reported a internet lower of 5,370 workers in Q3 FY25, bringing its whole workforce to 607,354. This decline follows two consecutive quarters of headcount development, marking a major shift within the firm’s employment developments.
Regardless of this, Milind Lakkad, chief HR officer, shared that the agency has had over 25,000 promotions in Q3, bringing the overall for the 12 months to over 110,000. Lakkad mentioned the corporate needs to get on monitor with its campus hiring objective of 40,000 individuals this 12 months.
In the meantime, TCS reported that its purchasers are actively investing in generative AI and agentic AI whereas constructing sturdy knowledge foundations. The agency has began engaged on AI brokers and drug discovery for its purchasers. This runs fairly in distinction with the agency’s upskilling initiatives since many workers have but to be skilled in AI.
No AI Washing
This headcount discount is just not restricted to TCS. India’s prime 5 IT companies—Infosys, Wipro, HCLTech, Tech Mahindra and TCS—collectively skilled a decline for the seventh straight quarter. Within the first quarter of FY25 alone, these firms noticed a mixed discount of two,034 workers in comparison with the earlier quarter.
Tech Mahindra, which reported the best YoY revenue of 93%, additionally noticed a 3,785 headcount decline. In the meantime, the agency has actively invested in generative AI and is the one massive Indian IT firm that has constructed its personal sovereign LLM and framework.
The corporate plans to rent 6,000 freshers this fiscal 12 months, with 3,000 already onboarded within the final two quarters.
Wipro, which has additionally determined to shift its focus to agentic AI with $1 billion value of offers, noticed a decline of 1,157 workers. Chief Srini Pallia mentioned that the corporate needs to experiment in rising areas like customer support and provide chain administration.
Although it sounds ultimate, additionally it is the explanation for the decline within the workforce, as AI brokers can scale back the reliance on the human workforce.
Wipro additionally plans to rent round 12,000 freshers this fiscal 12 months.
Regardless of the hiring, the IT trade is anticipated so as to add lower than a fourth of the 60,000 individuals it added within the earlier fiscal 12 months by the tip of FY2025.
What’s to Study?
Although the person reductions in headcount had been excessive, the general depend this quarter stands low as a result of Infosys and HCLTech elevated their worker counts by 5,591 and a couple of,134, respectively. That is whereas each companies made a number of bulletins about their AI plans this quarter.
Salil Parekh, CEO and MD of Infosys, revealed that the agency had constructed 4 small language fashions for its purchasers and was additionally constructing over 100 AI brokers. “We’re clear about what we’re doing in generative AI,” Parekh mentioned. He added that Infosys was not ‘AI washing’ like some others within the trade, however as a substitute, it was doing actual generative AI work.
Equally, HCLTech mentioned that its AI Drive platform had already been adopted by over 20 purchasers, with plans to scale to over 100 purchasers by FY26. HCLTech can be exploring agentic AI for worker productiveness.
Infosys can be planning to extend its freshers consumption to fifteen,000 in FY25. Moreover, it introduced rolling out a 6-8% hike in February. HCLTech additionally plans to rent round 7,000 freshers. The 2 firms show that the deal with AI may be achieved with out decreasing the headcount.
About 20-25% of brisker hiring within the IT sector is now focused in the direction of AI expertise. That is an uptick from a dismal 5-10% over the past three years. However this has additionally resulted within the discount of workforce measurement within the companies, affecting the general headcount.
All of that is additionally whereas the talk round working 90 hours per week was began by L&T chairman SN Subrahmanyan, which in response to many, is a recipe for attrition.
The submit India IT Focuses on AI Whereas Headcount Declines appeared first on Analytics India Journal.