Considering the volatile market conditions, it’s quite normal that Indian IT companies’ commentaries have been muted about their hiring plans for this fiscal.
IT Firms Hiring Inorganically
But, it gets intersting as It gets interesting as these companies have been adding employees inorganically.
IT companies have inducted at least 5,550 employees on their payroll inorganically, as per publicly available numbers.
Further, it could go over 8,000 if other deals, whose numbers are not in public domain, are taken into account, the analysts say.
Notably, this addition in their headcount is being done either through rebadging deals or through acquisitions they are making.
Here rebadging is the transfer of employees from clients to IT vendors and many times are part of the deals that IT companies bagged from clients.
Decline in Headcount
Basically, the Indian IT services firms saw a decline of 22,000 in their net aggregate headcount in the first quarter of FY24, according to the Jefferies.
It is much higher compared to a decline of 9,000 in their net aggregate headcount in March quarter of FY23.
Consider the case of the Infosys and Danske Bank deal, where the IT giant in June said that it will acquire 1,400 employees of the bank’s IT center in India.
Now, it is adding another 400 employees from its latest deal with Liberty Global.
Another IT giant, HCLTech also announced inducting 400 employees from its deal with Cloud Software Group this week.
The company completed the acquisition of the entire 100% stake in German automotive engineering services provider ASAP Group for $279 million during August this year.
In the similar manner, the ASAP Group has 1,600 employees across different locations.
This week, UST acquired a Dallas-based telecom engineering firm, MobileComm and integrated more than 1,300 employees to strengthen its telecommunication practice.
Moving ahead, Xoriant acquired Thoucentric, a Bengaluru-headquartered specialized consulting firm along with its 450 employees, last month.
Not only these, other midcaps like Happiest Minds, Mphasis, Sonata and LTTS have made acquisitions this calendar year.
For instance, Happiest Minds had said that it will hire 1,300 employees earlier this fiscal.
The MD and CFO, Happiest Minds, Venkatraman Narayanan said, acquisitions also add to their total headcount, last month.
While giving an example, he mentioned adding 500 people to the family from the Madurai-based SMI that was acquired by us.
