IT firms to add 1.5 lakh jobs this fiscal

Chennai: The infotech industry will recruit nearly 1.5 lakh people in the current fiscal. The industry is likely to grow at 12-14 per cent as against 10.5 per cent last year, according to R. Chandrasekaran, Group Chief Executive of Technology and Operations at Cognizant Technology Solutions.

Based on the June quarter results, the industry is on track to achieve the projected growth, he said. “We are quite optimistic,” said Chandrasekaran, who is also the chairman for Connect 2013, an ICT (information, communication technology) event to be held on September 23 and 24 in Chennai.

Healthy growth
Each IT job will generate four or five ancillary jobs. “Collectively, we are talking about creating one million jobs. Tell me, which industry is creating so many jobs?” he asked. “Given the current economic situation, which industry is growing at 12-14 per cent? Only the IT industry is showing such a healthy growth. Every other industry is talking about negative growth,” he told Business Line.

Every IT major has started on a healthy note this financial year, he said.

From a demand perspective too, the economy in the US, which is the biggest market for the industry, is stable. There is increased interest in Europe as companies there are looking at improving efficiencies using IT, he pointed out. Asked about the correlation between growth and adding people, Chandrasekaran said every company is focussed on improving efficiency and profit. Companies are looking at increasing employee utilisation or just-in-time hiring, he said. There are lots of operational parameters companies are looking at, he said.

Campus hiring
When asked if poor hiring in colleges reflects the slowdown in the industry, Chanadrasekaran said: “You should not go by what is happening at the campus level.”

He added that every company is hiring but maybe in a staggered way at multiple sources. According to him the IT industry is also moving to a non-linear revenue model. For example, companies are developing platforms and signing clients for an output-based services model andthis de-links headcount from revenue.

“The share of non-linear revenue is gradually increasing, though it is small now,” he said. Headcount addition is one of the indicators of growth. “The correlation between headcount and revenue will go over a period of time,” he said.