Global captives pip IT in hiring in a first in three years

Net hiring by global capability centres (GCCs) – or technology and engineering back-offices of large banking or retail multinationals – in India outnumbered recruitments done by information technology companies in the country for the first time in three years in the April-June quarter.

While the overall IT industry hiring has been flat amid lacklustre demand, GCCs continue to hire as they are mostly greenfield projects set up from scratch, industry insiders and experts said.

The top seven IT companies in the country reduced their headcount by 22,000 during the quarter ended June. Smaller IT companies hired in small numbers, mostly related to upcoming demand in the next 2-4 quarters, making overall IT hiring flat in the quarter.


On the other hand, 40 major GCCs hired 25,000-28,000 during the quarter, data shared by specialist staffing firm Xpheno showed.

“We expect around 15 more GCCs will be set up this year, beyond the 22 that have already been established,” said Kamal Karanth, cofounder of Xpheno.

“There are about 100 GCCs seeking to actively expand their employee base in India with a requirement of 50,000-75,000 employees. A portion of this talent will also come from the experienced pool of IT service companies, which could be anywhere above 25,000,” he told ET.

HR experts said IT services majors will need to backfill some or all of the talent they have lost due to attrition before they hire for expansions.

It is to be noted that nearly 65% of GCCs talent expansion needs last fiscal (FY23) were fulfilled by absorbing talent from the IT services sector.

Pari Natarajan, cofounder and CEO of global strategy consulting firm Zinnov, said IT companies hire 2-4 quarters before the demand kicks in. “Most of them have over-hired in the last few years. But the demand came down and they had enough people on their payrolls,” he told ET.

As per their projections, in the next few quarters, IT companies are not going to grow as fast as they were growing in the last two years, Natarajan said.

ET had reported last month that the top six Indian IT services companies that have announced first-quarter earnings recorded the sharpest contraction in headcount in the last three years in the April-June period. Aggregate staffing at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, HCLTech, Wipro, LTIMindtree and L&T Technology Services (LTTS) contracted by 18,000, worse than a negative 9,000 in in the June quarter of 2021, which was during the first Covid-19 wave.

IT companies are feeling the heat of the slowdown in discretionary spends and ramping down of projects. This has resulted in employees forgoing annual hikes or quarterly bonuses – which is another reason why employees are opting for GCCs over IT firms.

India’s third-largest IT firm HCLTech told ET that senior employees will not get annual increments for this fiscal year while hikes will be deferred by a quarter for other staff. Wipro has also delayed annual hikes by a quarter.