Mumbai : Entry-level salaries at Indian software services companies are set to rise after almost a decade, as a Covid-induced surge in demand has led to high stagnation and a rush of new talent.
According to industry insiders, salaries in this sector will increase by at least 15% and, in some cases, up to 60% for new employees.
“The salary of entry level engineers has been revised 4.25 lakh from this year 3.65 lakhs. We are also tying up with engineering colleges for courses in analytics and digital content and students who take courses and pass them will join HCL 6 lakh salary,” said Apparao VV, Chief Human Resource Officer, HCL Technologies.
HCL’s strategy of raising salaries could prompt rivals such as Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro and TCS to follow suit. A senior industry official said that TCS is working on increasing the salary package for the graduates of the 2022 batch.
TCS and Infosys did not immediately respond to queries. Wipro is maintaining a silence period and will not entertain media queries, while Cognizant did not respond till press time.
Tech companies are revising salaries as part of their new hiring strategy to retain the talent that has been at record levels for the past two quarters and to lay off employees.
“We started it for batch of 2022 who have passed out this year, and from here we will organize more of this event.”
Noida-based HCL plans to hire 45,000 freshers in FY13, almost double the 23,000 last year. In FY22, Infosys recruited 85,000 freshers and plans to hire 50,000 college graduates this year. TCS inducted around 78,000 freshers in FY 2012 and is targeting to hire around 40,000 graduates from various campuses this year.
As India Inc. Trying to keep pace with increasing digital adoption and increasing demand for cloud-based services, the need for experts in programming languages such as Java is increasing. Javascript, Python and SQL. Industry body Nasscom said that the sector has employed a record 450,000 employees in FY22.
Executives of top IT companies said that hiring and training of freshers is the only sustainable way to meet the demand, as non-competition between companies, prevents candidates from joining rival firms for roles. The fight for candidates at the senior level has given rise to poaching. In which the project and customer details are the same. according to this industry estimates1.5 million-1.8 million IT engineers graduate every year.
“Talent remains a major competitive advantage for the Indian technology industry. As of FY22E, India’s technology industry employed over 5.1 million talent pools, of which about 1.6 million were digitally proficient. In FY 2012, 450,000 people were hired, most of whom were freshers,” said Sangeeta Gupta, senior vice president and chief strategy officer, NASSCOM.
“Companies are expanding the spectrum of talent acquisition through efforts to skill university graduates with new technical courses that are currently in demand, focusing on on-campus fresher hiring, providing financial incentives, etc. and devising talent strategies to build digital capabilities in small cities that are generating significant dividends in augmenting talent supply and catalysing the next decade of growth and innovation for India.”
On a 12-month (TTM) basis, Infosys’ attrition rate increased from 15.2% a year ago and 25.5% in the December quarter to 27.7% in the fourth quarter of the fiscal. TCS had the lowest job loss rate in the industry, rising to 17.4% in the March quarter, from 7.2% a year ago and 15.3% in the December quarter.
HCL’s attrition rate stood at 21.9 per cent at the end of March, up from 9.9 per cent a year ago.