There has been a reduction of more than 7000 in the workforce of the country’s leading IT companies.Image Credit source: Google Gemini
A clear change was seen in India’s IT hiring story in the financial year 2026. The country’s top companies are restructuring their business operations according to their AI (Artificial Intelligence) targets, due to which they are being cautious in increasing the workforce. TCS, Infosys, HCL Tech, Wipro, Tech Mahindra saw a sharp decline in the total number of employees. This number decreased by 7,389 in FY26, which was in sharp contrast to the marginal increase of 12,718 employees in FY2025.
The biggest shock for the IT industry in the financial year 2026 was that TCS, the country’s largest private sector employer, decided to lay off 12,000 people from its workforce. This was the biggest layoff done by any Indian corporate company in recent times. Due to this, the total hiring of the top five IT companies went into negative, although three out of these five companies have reported an overall increase in the number of employees. There are continuous indications from the management that caution will be taken in the matter of hiring. Companies refrained from giving any concrete estimates about their hiring plans for FY 2027.
Individually, Infosys’ employee headcount declined by 8,440 in Q4FY26, while TCS added 2,356, HCLTech added 802 employees and Wipro’s employee headcount increased marginally by 135 compared to the previous quarter. Tech Mahindra lost around 1,993 employees. According to Nasscom’s latest annual strategic review, India’s technology industry added only 2,000 new jobs in fiscal year 2026 compared to last year.
Overall, about 1.35 lakh employees were added, which was just slightly more than the approximately 1.33 lakh jobs added in FY 2025. This shows that the increase in hiring has almost stopped. At the industry level, the total number of employees in this sector is expected to increase to 59.5 lakh (5.95 million) in FY2026, from 58.2 lakh (5.82 million) last year. This means that the number of employees increased by 2.3 percent.
What are the targets of the companies?
TCS said that it will hire 25,000 new people as of now in the financial year 2027, and will increase this target depending on the demand during the year. This is much less than its previous target of hiring 40,000-42,000 new people in FY 2025 and FY 2026. Infosys plans to hire almost the same number of people in the new financial year, i.e. 20,000 new people, as it had hired in the financial year 2026. HCLTech, Tech Mahindra and Wipro said they will take a decision on this as the new financial year progresses. In FY26, HCLTech hired 11,744 new people and Wipro hired 7,500 employees.
What did the management of the companies say?
TCS said its focus is on building a “future ready organization”, for which it is strategically hiring both fresh graduates and experienced professionals. TCS CHRO Sudeep Kunnumal said during the company’s earnings conference on April 9 that ‘Our recruitment efforts have been focused on people who have expertise in AI, data, enterprise solutions, software engineering, cloud, cyber security and digital engineering. In FY 2026, we also hired more than 750 employees who have deep expertise in advisory and consulting. We have also increased our investment in talent development initiatives.
Infosys CFO Jayesh Sangharajka said the decline in employee numbers was due to quarterly seasonal fluctuations. He said, “Our headcount has come down sequentially, but on a year-on-year (YoY) basis it has increased by 5,000 people. There is always some quarterly seasonal fluctuation. The headcount depends on how well we are utilizing our resources and the volume of work we are getting. The volume of work was a little less this quarter, and we also had to adjust to the new people coming into the system.
Rationalizing the headcount and improving the utilization rate of existing employees is the backbone of Tech Mahindra’s strategy to improve its margins under its three-year business transformation plan. Tech Mahindra CFO Rohit Anand said that we had hired a large number of new people in the first year of our plan. As we entered the second year, our strategy changed.
He said that we have decided that we will stop the recruitment for some time. With the advent of AI, the nature of demand for work had also changed. This year was mainly a year of adjusting to the same changes and keeping the recruitment of new people to a minimum. He said that as we move into the next year, I think we will resume some of those things going forward.
In fiscal year 2027, HCLTech will hire the same number of new people as it did this year, but the company did not say how many people it will hire, because its evaluation is done every three months. HCLTech Chief People Officer Ram Sundararajan said that overall, the number of people hiring is always changing. For this, it is very difficult to estimate the entire year.
He said that generally, it works on the basis of every three months and every month data. Hiring at the entry level will remain the same as we have done this year. In the current environment, it would not be wise to give any figures for the entire year. Wipro Chief Human Resource Officer Saurabh Govil said that we do not have any target to hire new people for the next financial year. It completely depends on the demand, and the environment keeps changing very rapidly.
