In a departure from the past year, entry-level hiring is robust in India’s top two software exporters.
TCS and Infosys, which both posted their annual results today, said that net additional hires for the year were more than 50,000.
TCS hired 29,287 employees and Infosys hired 24,016 techies in the 2018-19 fiscal.
TCS total employee headcount was 4,24,285 and Infosys closed 2019 fiscal at 2,28,123 employees.
In comparison, both the IT majors added a total of around 11,000 employees in 2018 fiscal.
Further, Infosys said that it has crossed 10,000 employees in the US, which includes re-badging of people. Re-badging is industry terminology for transferring people from a customer to an incoming supplier for projects.
Other software exporters, such as Wipro, HCL and Cognizant are expected to announce their results this month.
This development comes in the backdrop of IT companies handing out pink slips in 2017-18 as a result of lack of projects, automation, migration to cloud computing and others.
The shake-up has passed, and it augurs well for the future, said Rituparna Chakraborty, co-founder, TeamLease and President, Indian Staffing Federation.
Industry watchers believe that the transformation of Indian software exporters, coupled with success in digital business are some of the reasons for this uptick in hiring.
Also, the IT sector has performed well in the past 12 months on the back of currency tailwinds with the Dollar hitting the 70 mark recently.
“The market is definitely better off this year when compared to the last one,” said Kris Lakshmikanth, CEO, Head Hunters India.
A bulk of the hiring is happening at the entry-level, according to industry watchers. According to a cutshort.io report, Bangalore, Pune, Delhi and Hyderabad constitute roughly 65 per cent of the talent pool of full stack developers.
“Also, with this hiring numbers, companies are showing that they are seeing confidence in the near future and this is an effort to beef up the bench,” said Lakshmikanth.
Infosys has also doled out 2,500 promotions. Salary hikes offshore were 6 per cent, and onsite hikes were in the range of 1-1.5 per cent, said COO Pravin Rao.