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.

Cognizant to Become Third Largest IT Company in India

Cognizant is all set to oust Wipro to become India’s Third Largest IT Company on August 2, the day when they will declare their quarterly result. On Wednesday Wipro announced their revenues at $1.408 billion for the Q1 which is about $40 million less than Cognizant's April-June quarter revenue guidance of $1.45 billion.

Apart from that Infosys's and Wipro's results all other IT giants like TCS, IBM and Accenture have shown incredible growth in the IT sector. Cognizant is also expected to meet the target and beat the expectation. Infosys's and Wipro's dismal result only is due to own company-specific issues.

 
Analysts explain that Cognizant's focus on faster growth rates and market share gain with lower margins has helped it to surpass Wipro. It invests significantly higher than its competitors in sales and marketing and recruits lots of highly qualified employees from MBA background. 

Market forecast that Wipro to grow at 13.5% for the 2011-12 FY while Cognizant is expected to grow at around 29% growth rate. And if this trend continues then Wipro will no longer remain third largest IT service provider in India and it would be very difficult for them to catch up with Cognizant in the near future.

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.

Amul is the 'Top Indian Green brand' - Survey Reveals

Last week an opinion poll conducted for Green Brands Global Survey in eight countries and the survey result shows that Amul has been rated as the ‘Top Indian Green Brand’.  Amul is the largest food brand in India and largest Pouched Milk Brand in the world.

The survey was conducted by Cohn & Wolfe, Esty Environmental Partners and Penn Schoen Berland in eight countries with more than 370 popular brands and over 9000 people cast their opinion.

The poll was carried out in Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, USA, UK and India. Green Brands Global Survey focused their research on to finding the brand which encourages greenest reputation across globe. Amul came first beating brands like Dabur, Taj Hotels, Suzlon, Wipro, Maruti, Birtannia, Infosys, Hindustan Unilever and Godrej Consumer Products.

In a Press meet Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation's Managing Director, R S Sodhi said "Amul's initiative of planting 8-9 million saplings by its three million members on a single day on August 15 last year in 15,000 villages has been recognized by the consumers."  He adds, "A total of 24 million saplings have been planted so far over four years and another 10 million will be planted on August 15 this year."