Indian IT Services to hire about 450,000 people in H2FY22: UnearthInsight

As most pandemic restrictions have been lifted and workplaces are opening, the Indian information technology services industry is likely to see a gross employee addition of around 450,000 people in the second half of financial year 2022 (H2FY22), according to UnearthInsight, a metrics benchmarking and market intelligence firm.

These 450,000 people are largely laterals/experienced ones, but fresher intake is also is larger than last year.

With higher attrition in H2 of 17-19 per cent, the industry is likely to have a net employee addition of about 175,000 in H2FY22, according to the report titled “IT Industry Q2 Insights & FY22 Forecast”. UnearthInsight has analysed hiring, attrition, and technology evolution of India’s IT industry.

“Our H2FY22 report unveils insightful findings, and it further brings out the fact that the IT Industry’s perceived “War on Talent” is real and is getting intense, with attrition becoming a rising concern for the industry. It’s crucial for the industry to focus on employee value proposition (EVP) even more aggressively to keep attrition in check. Also, one of the highlights of H1 is the way top IT firms have delivered upskilling programmes in completely digital format and have developed robust infrastructure to support such initiatives. On the hiring side, the industry is expected to see a sharp momentum with addition of around 12% more employees than H1 in the second half of the year,” said Gaurav Vasu, Founder and CEO UnearthInsight.

The report further finds nearly 250,000 freshers have been added so far in FY22 by over 30 IT services firms, both domestic and multinational, in India.

In fresher hiring in FY22, the top five companies are likely to be Tata Consultancy Services , which will hire 77,000 freshers (43,000 hired in H1FY22 plus 34,000 in H2FY22); Cognizant, which has said it will hire 45,000 freshers; Infosys (45,000 freshers); Tech Mahindra, (15,000 freshers); and HCL Technologies (22,000 in FY22 and 30,000 in FY23).

Indian technology firms are majorly focusing on upskilling programmes both in India and global markets.

The report adds that TCS leverages multiple learning tools on its iON learning platform and initiatives for reskilling its global workforce. Ninety per cent of Infosys employees learn through LEX, a platform that helps them reskill and upskill to meet the evolving requirements of the organisation. Other tier-I and tier-II firms like Wipro, HCL, Tech Mahindra, Mindtree and Mphasis are working towards creating a single interface for employees for learning, upskilling, reskilling and deployment.

Key attrition trends

UnearthInsight expects H2FY22 attrition to be higher at 17-19 per cent over the last 12 months (LTM) while FY23 likely to be 16-18 per cent. The fresher addition across the next two quarters may help IT services firms control overall attrition in the industry.

The rise in industry attrition is driven by the supply-side challenges which are transient and are expected to normalise in FY23.

Outlook on Technology Adoption: Increasing Cloud competition among tech giants

Unearthinsight estimates $80 billion to $100 billion in cloud services revenue for the IT services industry by 2030.

This is led by companies like Accenture, which recorded very strong double-digit growth in Cloud Industry X and Security.

The French It major Capgemini's digital and cloud services primarily underpinned performance, accounting for around two thirds of activity and recording strong double-digit year-on-year growth at constant exchange rates in H1.

Infosys, India's second largest It firm aggressively realigned strategic focus to scale digital transformation projects over the last two years, with significant investments in sales, increased large deal participation, and increased flexibility on deal structure, resulting in a sharp increase in large transformation deals around DX projects, hybrid cloud adoption, and automation, UnearthInsight said.

HCL Technologies expects to hire 10,000 people to its AWS practice called Amazon Web Services (AWS) Business Unit, while Wipro launched Full Stride Cloud Services which integrates their consulting and technology capabilities along with Cloud Studio-based assets.

Tech Mahindra's management foresees high adoption of cloud as one of its pillars of growth and continues to focus on providing holistic cloud strategy to drive the overall customer experience journey and accelerate cloud adoption across public, private and hybrid environments. UnearthInsight believes it should also focus on extending its partnership with cloud practices of global players like Amazon, Google and few niche players

On the software product and platform business side, Unearthinsight estimates $15 billion to $20 billion revenues by 2030 from Software Product and Platform business for Top Tier IT services firms (Public & Private). TCS, Infosys and HCL will continue to expand US, Southeast Asia and India while likes Algonomy (Earlier Manthan), 3i, Persistent, Ramco, Financial Technology, Decimal Technologies and many private Tier II and Tier III firms are expected to generate larger percentage of revenues from products/platforms in global markets like US, UK, UAE, Singapore, Africa markets.