The hiring frenzy is over at India's services giants

When India's top four outsourcers – Wipro, HCL Tech, Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) – announce their results, they often mention plans to hire thousands of new workers to both grow headcount and replace departed workers. But across 2023 and into 2024, that changed.

In FY2024 results announcements made across the last two weeks, Wipro revealed a net decrease in 24,516 employees, Infosys shed 25,994, and Tata Consultancy Services farewell 13,249. HCL Technologies bucked the trend by adding employees – but just 1,537.

Nonetheless, HCL celebrated the win.

"In terms of people, our headcount ramp up continues," declared [PDF] HCL Technologies CEO C Vijayakumar last Friday.

TCS chief HR officer Milind Lakkad poured on the buzzwords [PDF], explaining that his business was continuing to "recalibrate our lateral hiring focusing more on utilizing the capacity that we have built over the prior years."

Infosys CFO Jayesh Sanghrajka explained ...