Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Days after Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) said it would lay off 2 percent of its workforce (12,000 staffers) this year, which triggered fears that the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other tools could reduce at least 125,000 jobs in this sector, Infosys on Wednesday said it would hire 20,000 freshers this year.
Infosys CEO Salil Parekh said the company is focusing on AI and workforce development to stay ahead. Infosys has so far trained nearly 2.75 lakh employees in AI and digital technologies at different levels, the media reported.
He said the company plans to hire around 20,000 college graduates this year.
“We recruited over 17,000 people (gross hiring) in the first quarter and plan to bring in about 20,000 college graduates this year.”
About the role of AI in operations, Parekh said, “AI allows for deeper automation and insights,” but added that it also demands “higher-level skills and more effort.” Infosys remains focused on growing its workforce and building long-term strength in both talent and technology.
He said, “We’ve been deeply focused on AI transformation — whether it’s building AI agents or developing smaller language models internally.”
Software development productivity has improved by 5 to 15 percent with AI, he said, adding larger improvements have been seen in areas like customer service and knowledge work.
He also stressed that human involvement is still essential for complex systems. “Infosys Finacle, our banking platform, delivers around 20 percent productivity improvement by blending automation with human oversight,” he said.
On salaries, Parekh said Infosys had completed its appraisal cycles for the fourth quarter and the first quarter of the last financial year.
“Now that this cycle is complete, we are beginning to evaluate the timing for the next round—as we do after every cycle. We will stick with our existing process and announce the next cycle at the right time,” he added.