Capgemini to grow India headcount to 70,000 by end of 2016

French IT services and consulting services says offshoring to India on increase

French IT services and consulting company Capgemini on Friday said that it is on track to cross headcount of 70,000 in India in 2016 on back of increasing offshoring to the country from global clients.

The Paris-headquartered company currently has over 50,000 employees in India, more than third of its global workforce, who are spread across nine locations including Mumbai, Gurgaon, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Kolkata and Chennai. The company's operations in Bengaluru are the largest for the company, with around 18,000 employees.

"We have been saying that our ambition is to be roughly around 70,000 employee organization in India and I think we are on track for that. We are definitely reaching this figure in 2016 if not by end of this year," Aruna Jayanthi, CEO of Capgemini India and member of Capgemini Group Executive Committee.

Among the European IT services company, Capgemini has been one of the early adopters of offshoring model which it also terms as 'rightshoring'. At present, offshoring makes up to over 40 per cent of the company's overall revenues.

Jayanthi said while traditionally the India delivery centres work on projects from markets like North American, over the years the amount of offfshoring from countries in Europe including the United Kingdom, and Asia pacific region.

"Our primary volumes in India come from offshore model and that will always be a bigger part of revenues and that is doing very well. Indian market has also done very well in the recent past," Jayanthi added.

She however said that during the last two quarters, employee attrition in the company has gone up by almost 3-4 per cent with the picking up of the hiring. The company is taking several measures to contain the attrition.

On Tuesday, Capgemini inaugurated a new facility in the Whitefield area of the city which can accommodate around 5000 employees which has a sitting capacity of around 5,000 seats. The company intends to offer services such as application development and maintenance (ADM), BPO, consulting services as well as infrastructure services to global clients based in the US as well as Europe from the new centre.