HCL Technologies to Hire 3,000 Employees

Software service provider HCL Technologies is going to hire about 3,000 employees in the July-September quarter.

 

CEO of HCLT, Vineet Nayar told media, "We have already hired 3,000 people in the June quarter. In this quarter, we will hire an additional 3,000 freshers,” "We expect the September quarter margins to drop 300 basis points. Of this, about 250 bps would be on account of wage hikes and the remaining 50 bps on new hires, however we are expecting a 300 bps drop in margins in Q1, we will recover in the next three quarters" he adds. The company has given a 12-14% wage hike for its Indian staff in July-June fiscal and increased onsite salaries by 2-3%.

The company also plan to increase its capital expenditure to USD 230 million for FY'12. "Last year, our capex was at USD 170 million. This year, we are stepping up our capex to USD 230 million. Most of this will go toward expansion of campuses," HCLT CFO Anil Chanana said.

This is very good news for the Indian IT industry as already TCS has announced their plan to hire 60,000 staffs this fiscal year while Wipro and Infosys are also hiring aggressively. The hiring process is coming this big as all the major IT companies are building up their bench strengths to handle the bigger size and variety of projects they expect to grab in the coming months.

Dismal performance of Infosys in the first-quarter

Infosys is no longer leading player in India’s IT sector. Infosys's dismal first-quarter performance proved that this company no longer represents the broader trends in the sector. As IT sector is booming, a strong demand emerges globally for IT outsourcing, it is very disappointing result for this IT giant. Infosys's first-quarter net profit missed expectations.

While Infosys’s biggest competitor and India’s largest IT player TCS is showing consecutive outstanding growth rate, Infosys’ result are very dull. 

While TCS has recovered from its loss and within 2 years till March 2011, they have started showing profit in sales and operations by 10% & 16%, Infosys recorded 8% and 8.1% growth respectively.

While talking to the media a senior official of Infosys told that they are looking forward to a stronger second half compared to the first half.

Strange is that even smaller competitors of Infosys like Cognizant and HCL Tech, have been able to take advantage of the rebound in demand to register better growth, but Infosys strategy fails largely. Therefore it raises some serious questions over the strategies and plans that Infosys depends upon.

The reason management of Infosys gives that the performance was hit badly due to wage hikes. But India’s second largest IT Company used to show path to others how to curb the wage hikes and still register significant profitable growth. This time around it was severely missing.