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India’s top five IT services giants together added 12,718 employees in financial year 2025. Though a dismal number given that the IT industry is one of the largest employers in the country, it’s still a turnaround from FY24's plunge, the worst in almost two decades, when it comes to year-on-year headcount.

In FY24, these tech companies cumulatively trimmed headcount by almost 70,000 amidst uncertainty in demand as customers were paring or delaying tech spending in a challenging macro environment.

Interestingly, most of these concerns still remain with the added worry of  US President Donald Trump’s tariffs, expected to affect certain geographies and key industries. However, CEOs of IT companies are hoping this is a short-term uncertainty that will eventually fade and demand will revive.

Additionally, experts point out that the arrival of artificial intelligence (AI) has upended the old model of hiring and could be the reason for low headcount additions.

In FY25, the country’s largest software exporter Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) added 6,433 employees, Infosys added 6,338, Wipro’s headcount increased by 732, and Tech Mahindra’s workforce grew by 3,276. The only exception among the top five firms was HCL Technologies, which saw a decline of 4,061 employees in the fiscal.

While most of these companies also met their fresher hiring targets in  FY25, the management shied away from sharing exact hiring targets for FY26, citing uncertainty in the demand environment.

Fresher hiring commentary

TCS slightly exceeded its fresher hiring target for FY25, adding 42,000 against its 40,000 target. For FY26, the company expects to add a similar number or exceed the FY25 figures.

Milind Lakkad, chief human resources officer at TCS, shared that artificial intelligence (AI) will have a bearing on hiring as the nascent technology for business is a new opportunity. "We will need new people for that. AI for IT will have an impact. We believe that as we move forward, we will gain productivity. We will deliver more work for our customers," he said.

He added that the company will hire AI talent from all geographies as India alone doesn't have enough trained and skilled manpower.

Infosys has set a target to hire over 20,000 freshers in FY26, and it has already met its target of adding 15,000-20,000 new talent in FY25, according to the company’s chief financial officer Jayesh Sanghrajka.

It, too, has been focusing on AI skilling. According to a note from Kotak Institutional Equities, close to 85 percent of Infosys employees are AI-ready with a level of expertise ranging from being AI aware to being AI experts.

HCLTech in the preceding quarter had revised its fresher hiring target for FY25 to 7,000 from an earlier guidance of 10,000, citing lower attrition rates and improved productivity. The company ended FY25 with an addition of 7,829 freshers.

For FY26, HCLTech has decided to move away from giving full-year hiring targets, but plans to add around 2,000 campus hires every quarter. The company, like TCS, expects the new talent addition in the current fiscal to be better than in FY25. “We're not trying to define an annual plan in the current climate, it's a lot more prudent to make plans quarterly. Every quarter, we will continue to hire 2000 freshers,” Ramachandran Sundararajan, the chief people officer, HCLTech, said at  a media interaction after declaring the fourth-quarter results.

Wipro concluded FY25 with a fresher addition of 10,000. Its full-year target was hiring 10,000-12,000 freshers. In FY26, though Wipro hopes to add a similar number from campuses, it will take a call after taking into account the prevailing business environment, given the current macroeconomic uncertainties.

Saurabh Govil, CHRO, Wipro, said, “We ended FY25 with approximately 10,000 freshers hired. And we look to continue to see that, but we'll also keep a very close look at what's happening in the environment.”

“We don't want a situation where we onboard people and we don't have channels of deployment. So we'll keep a very close look. But that's the plan—continuously keep growing and adding,” he added.

Wipro also sees scope for employee utilisation rate improvement in the current environment of low growth.

Tech Mahindra added 6,100 employees from campuses in FY25, above its target of 6,000. Hiring for this financial year, the company said, will depend on the demand outlook.

"Visibility is a little bit muddy just now, but we expect it will improve with time, given all the actions that we're taking," Tech Mahindra CEO Mohit Joshi said.

From the management commentary so far, some 80,000-84,000 IT jobs are up for grabs in 2025-26. However, the actual figure can vary, as pointed out by the various executives. They attribute this to the uncertain demand environment that the companies are facing.

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