The pick-up in the economy has kicked off hiring plans in India Inc, with companies across the manufacturing and services sectors looking at new recruitments as they go into expansion mode.

They are not just expecting more business from the domestic market, but anticipate a boom in overseas business too, thanks to cash-crunched foreign companies looking at cost rationalisation.

Cisco has drawn up huge recruitment plans as it shifts some of its activities from abroad to India.

The company plans to boost its manpower in India to 15,000 over the next two years, adding 12,000 new workers.

Cognizant has added a net 8,135 people since December last year. Cognizant CFO Gordon Coburn said the company will continue to hire aggressively.

Accenture said it will add around 8,000 new people in India by the end of next year, taking its total employee strength to 50,000.

Accenture’s focus in India is going to be in the analytics space, company chairman and CEO William D Green said at the India Economic Summit where the overall mood was buoyant. Hirings in the IT space have in fact been continuing over the last few months.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)has already hired 7,800 people. TCS had made some 24,000 offers in 2008-09, according to its Q2 analyst call.

T major Wipro has also been hiring and after recruiting 1,000 people in the first six months of the fiscal, plans to add another 2,000 in the second half.

The company is also planning to extend salary increments across the board in Q4, which is significant considering it had not even budgeted for a hike at the beginning of the year.

Infosys BPO said it would hire 1,500-2,000 people by the end of this fiscal. The company is also reportedly planning to set up a new delivery centre in the US before end of 2009-10.

Infosys, in its Q2 earnings call, indicated that it would add 20,000 people instead of 18,000 indicated earlier. The additional 2,000 would be partly in BPO while the rest would make up laterals at Infosys Technologies.

iGate said it plans to add about 1,500 new recruitments in 2010. CEO Phaneesh Murthy said he expected IT budgets to be up 2-4% next year.

Hyundai has added a new manufacturing line to meet increased demand, has hired as many as 1200 workers between July and September this year and plans to further boost its strength as it looks to attract NRIs and expatriates to join its Indian workforce.

Nissan has said it would be more than doubling its manpower in India as it hopes that rising economic activity and disposable incomes will boost demand.

The company, which is setting up a new plant near Chennai, has plans to boost its manpower from 700 to 1500 by May.

Maruti, which plans to boost annual production to one million units, has plans to add around 400 new people including a mix of engineers, technicians, MBAs and CAs.

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KOLKATA: Is the IT industry witnessing a silent revival of sorts? Well, the signals seem to clearly suggest as much. Take, for instance, the latest forecast from Nasscom, the apex software industry body. Nasscom expects at least 70,000-80,000 engineering grads who passed out in June 2009 and were offered jobs in their 5th and 6th semesters by TCS, Infosys and Accenture, among others, to get absorbed by March 2010. Not too long ago, there were apprehensions that the appointments of these tech grads could get deferred till 2011 in the aftermath of the global slowdown. That perception appears to have changed.

Speaking to ET, Nasscom vice-president Sangeeta Gupta said: “There’s some amount of pick-up in IT spending and clients have become active in the decision-making process. This augurs well for the IT industry and is likely to result in hiring by IT companies. Companies like TCS, Infosys and Accenture, among others, are expected to start honouring the offers they made. As a result, at least 70k-80k engineering graduates, who were issued offer letters, are expected to get absorbed by March 2010.”

For instance, the country’s biggest software firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) had made some 24,000 offers in 2008-09, according to its Q2 analyst call. During the concall, the company had indicated it would honour these offers this fiscal. In Q3, TCS is expected to absorb about 8,000-odd, and the balance, in the following quarter. Till Q2, the company had absorbed some 1,800 people.

Similarly, Infosys, in its Q2 earnings call, indicated that it would add 20,000 people instead of 18,000 indicated earlier. The additional 2,000 would be partly in BPO while the rest would make up laterals at Infosys Technologies.

Incidentally, Nasscom has urged member companies to recruit those who’ve completed their eighth semester to ensure that hiring is closer to the need of companies. For this fiscal, Nasscom has projected a mere 4-7% export growth. It is likely, that with IT sector showing signs of recovery, Nasscom will review the export target. “We can review the export target by end- December,” she added.

Incidentally, McKinsey in its report titled ‘Perspectives in the IT industry by 2020’, has noted that with the current pace of reforms and expected constraints in talent and infrastructure supply, the exports component of the Indian IT industry is slated to reach $175 billion in revenues by 2020. The domestic component will contribute $50 billion in revenues by 2020, which is larger than the total export revenues for India now.

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