No wage hike for Infosys staff; hiring plan of 35k on track

Infosys on Thursday said it will stick to its target of hiring 35,000 people this fiscal but is not looking at wage hikes for now.

The hiring plan, which includes 13,000 jobs for its BPO operations, will be adhered to despite an uncertain global economic growth environment and the wage-hike freeze.

"We are going to add 35,000 more people this year, the same number as we guided last quarter for the full year," Infosys chief financial officer V Balakrishnan said, after the first quarter results announcement.

The number includes 13,000 people for the BPO operations, he added.

The company said, however, it is not looking at wage hikes as of now.

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Its larger rival TCS, which will announce results later on Thursday, has plans to hire 50,000 people in FY 2013.

Balakrishnan said Infosys has given promotions to 20,000 people, effective July 1, 2012. This is about over 13 per cent of the company's total strength of 1,51,151 as on June 30.

"We have done the promotions and progressions as we talked last time, we have done 20,000 across the corporations. If you look at 2008-2009, we had looked at the wage hike in the middle of the year. We will revisit the wage hike as usual in the middle of the year," Infosys CEO and managing director S D Shibulal said.

Infosys had said last quarter that it will not give any wage hikes and would review the decision depending on performance.

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However, with lower-than-expected earnings and forecast, in dollar term, it is unlikely that the freeze will be lifted any time soon.

Although in rupee terms, Infosys Q1 earnings jumped 32.92 per cent to Rs 2,289 crore (Rs 22.89 billion), in dollar terms they has grown just 4.8 per cent.

Besides, the company has lowered its dollar revenue growth forecast for 2012-13 to 5 per cent, from 8 per cent announced earlier.

The scrip of Infosys was trading lower by 8.56 per cent at Rs 2,255.15 on the BSE.

Infosys and its subsidiaries added 9,236 (gross) people in the first quarter of FY'13, while the net addition during the period stood at 1,157 employees.

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The rate of attrition during the quarter was marginally higher at 14.9 per cent against 14.7 per cent in the January-March quarter of 2011-12.

"Typically, attrition in the first quarter (of a fiscal) goes up because people tend to go for higher studies. About 30 per cent of our attrition was due to this reason," he added.

The company also said its margins were impacted by spend on visa and employee cost.

The US had raised visa fee in 2010, a move that India has been protesting against at different forums. Indian companies like TCS, Infosys and Wipro have been affected by the US action on visa fee hike for professionals.

The US is the largest market for Indian software companies accounting for about 60 per cent of the revenues.