The decline marks the first instance in the last five fiscal years where these companies have reported an overall decrease in their annual employee count.
Analysts attribute this trend primarily to the stagnant growth witnessed in FY24 which forced the companies to redirect their attention towards enhancing margins and utilisation rates, reported Money Control.
HCLTech stood out as the sole firm to increase its employee count in both the fourth quarter ending on March 31 and throughout the entirety of FY24.
HCLTech recorded a net addition of approximately 1,537 employees during FY24.
In the same fiscal, TCS experienced a reduction in headcount by 13,249, Infosys saw a decrease of 25,994 employees, and Wipro added 24,516 fewer employees. Tech Mahindra's headcount declined by 6,945, as reported in its April 25 earnings release.
During Q4, TCS added 1,759 fewer employees, Infosys saw a drop of 5,423, Wipro's headcount decreased by 6,180, and Tech Mahindra's net addition was down by 795. In contrast, HCLTech added 2,725 employees during the same period.
Pareekh Jain, founder of EIIRTrend said, as quoted by Money Control, "Since the growth was not happening in FY24, the companies were more focussed on improving margins which led to lower hiring. Once the growth is back, headcount will start increasing. Also, with generative AI coming in, companies might not even require that many employees, and we will see more just-in-time hiring depending on the requirement."
Infosys and Wipro didn't disclose specific targets for hiring new graduates in FY25, noting a change in traditional hiring approaches, especially for freshers. TCS, however, plans to hire around 40,000 freshers, HCLTech over 10,000, and Tech Mahindra plans to bring in 6,000 new graduates.
TCS CEO MD K Krithivasan told Moneycontrol, "We look at the trainees we deploy, we put them through our own internal training mechanisms and maybe after a period of 6 to 8 months, they become productive and billable. So, there will always be a lag."
Infosys CFO Jayesh Sanghrajka said, "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."
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