India's top four IT outsourcers- TCS, Infosys, HCL Technologies, and Wipro — collectively plan to hire 91,000 from campuses for the next financial year as demand has picked up sharply after the lockdown lows.

TCS executive VP and global HR head Milind Lakkad said in recent media interactions that the company expects to hire the same number of freshers for the following year as it did this year (around 40,000).

Infosys said it will hire 24,000 college graduates in India in the next financial year, up from the 15,000 that it had planned for the current one.

HCL Technologies chief HR officer Apparao V V said there are different reasons why the hiring momentum is picking up. “We are doing 33% more than what we had focused on and we see a reasonable bit of acceleration in Q3 and Q4. The visa environment, compensation revisions, and countries looking inward have put a cap in terms of the talent available in those nations. If customers scale up their engagement, they have to go where the skills are. In the last year, 70% of our increment in manpower was in India and 30% outside India. This year, it was nearly 90%-10%. We see tremendous ramp-ups in India,” he said. HCL plans to hire 15,000 freshers in India and 1,500-2,000 individuals on-site in the 2022-ending fiscal. 

James Friedman of Susquehanna Financial Group(SFG) said the demand is for the most part infrastructure-related. That’s where the “big deals” are, regularly with some digital wrapper, he said. “India mindshare appears once again on the rise,” he said. Infosys won the biggest deal ever in its history from German automotive major Daimler that sources said is estimated at $3.2 billion. TCS won a large deal from Prudential Financial. Wipro signed a big one with the German retailer Metro. Wipro expects a talent war to unfold within the next few months in the IT sector as companies have stepped up hiring in the last two quarters. “It is all about the demand. The way we have been hiring in the last few months…more demand means more opportunities,” chief HR officer Saurabh Govil said.

London-based IT advisory Omdia’s principal analyst Hansa Iyengar said enterprises are accelerating digital agendas and investments as the world looks at a post-pandemic recovery. “Campus recruitment is a good tool to bolster digital portfolios and delivery,” she said.

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