India's second-largest software services firm Infosys on Wednesday, January 12, announced that it will be hiring a total of 55,000 freshers by the end of FY22, as it announced its results for Q3. It reported an 11.8% rise in consolidated net profit to Rs 5,809 crore for the December 2021 quarter. The IT firm also increased its revenue growth guidance for FY22 to 19.5-20%. “We continue to prioritise investments in talent acquisition and development and have further increased our global graduate hiring program to over 55,000 for FY22 to support our growth ambitions,” Infosys CFO Nilanjan Roy said.
Infosys’s attrition came in at 25.5%, up from 20.1% last quarter. Nilanjan Roy said that while this is an industry wide issue, he too — similar to Wipro — said that this number will begin moderating or inching down soon. He said that they have noticed stabilisation this quarter, and will get better as more freshers enter the system. “We are quite happy with where we are but agree that the numbers are high,” he said. Infosys had 2,92,067 employees as on December 31, 2021, a net addition of 12,450 from the previous quarter.
For employee retention, Roy said they have a three-pronged strategy — promising long term careers including a cycle of promotions, competitive rewards and compensation and reskilling of employees.
On the impact of the Omicron variant, CEO Salil Parekh said that the impact is most likely to be in the current quarter and if it follows the same trend as in other countries, employees could potentially be back in offices by the end of the quarter but this trend is flexible.
The Bengaluru-based company had registered a net profit (after minority interest) of Rs 5,197 crore a year ago, a regulatory filing said. Infosys' revenue grew 22.9% to Rs 31,867 crore in the quarter ended December 2021, from Rs 25,927 crore in the year-ago period, it added. Buoyed by the strong performance, Infosys has increased its FY22 revenue growth forecast to 19.5-20% in constant currency terms against its guidance of 16.5-17.5% given in October 2021.
“We expect the healthy technology spend to continue with large enterprises progressing on their digital transformations,” CEO Salil Parekh said.
Nilanjan Roy said that despite the cost escalations, driven primarily by supply-side challenges, the company delivered another quarter of healthy margins with improved cost optimisation, continued operating leverage and a stable pricing environment.
Infosys delivered a strong December quarter performance with sequential growth of 7% in a seasonally weak quarter and year-on-year growth of 21.5% in constant currency. Growth remained broad-based and deal momentum robust, with digital transformation rapidly scaling across verticals and regions. Large deal wins accelerated with TCV (total contract value) of USD 2.53 billion in Q3, it added.
With PTI inputs