Infosys hired only 11,900 campus recruits in FY24, which is a 76% drop compared to the 50,000 freshers hired the previous year.
Engineering graduates are facing a tough job market as major IT companies predict slow growth for this fiscal year. Infosys, for the first time in over 20 years, saw a significant headcount drop, reducing by 25,994 employees during FY24. By the end of this March, the combined headcount of TCS, Infosys, and Wipro decreased by nearly 64,000.
“We recruited nearly 11,900 college graduates in the year and ended the period with over 317,000 employees,” Infosys CEO Salil Parekh wrote in the company’s annual report. The IT firm has already skipped campus placements for four quarters in a row.
In his letter to shareholders, Infosys chairman Nandan Nilekani mentioned that the initial panic about AI doomerism and the risk of human extinction due to advances like artificial general intelligence (AGI) has calmed down.
“People have accepted that, like any other general-purpose technology, be it electricity, nuclear energy, the internet, or even a discovery like fire, GenAI has enormous potential for good when explored and advanced within the guardrails of responsibility,” he said. Even as AI has become mainstream, Nilekani said enterprise AI will be markedly different from consumer AI. “Besides, many of the doomsday prophets pleading for extensive AI regulation have revealed themselves to be just protectionists who want to limit the fruits of GenAI to a few companies and investors,” he added. Nilekani is seeking reappointment as director.
Infosys CEO Salil Parekh earned Rs 66.3 crore in compensation for FY24, marking a 17.3% increase from the previous year. His remuneration included Rs 39 crore from RSUs exercised during FY24. In FY23, Parekh received Rs 56 crore as compensation. In comparison, TCS CEO K Krithivasan earned a more modest Rs 25.3 crore, making him one of the lowest-paid CEOs in the Indian IT sector. Wipro’s new CEO Srini Pallia will receive Rs 50 crore in compensation. Meanwhile, the median employee remuneration was Rs 9.7 lakh in FY24, up from Rs 9 lakh in FY23.
