The Navi lending app, launched in May, provides instant loans of up to Rs 5 lakh, with repayment tenures of up to 36 months.
The appraisals being done by most companies this year are harsher than past ones with higher threshold in many metrics. Reduction in headcount has been done across most tier-I and tier-II IT firms along with global technology firms in the country.
Most Indian IT firms work as system integrators for Huawei and though the exposure is very less as of now, the potential is more due to 5G roll out. As pressure to keep the Chinese firm out of the 5G network grows, other global firms, including Japan's NEC, South Korea's Samsung, Finland's Nokia and Sweden's Ericssion are increasing their investments to grab more market share in the telecom sector.
76 families took a Qatar Airways flight from San Francisco on Sunday evening and reached Bangalore International Airport after a 20-hour flight. These employees were stuck in the US due to various reasons.
The annual meet also saw some shareholders of the country's second largest IT services company raising concerns over falling operating margins. But many congratulated the management for delivering good FY20 performance despite the tough economic conditions.
This is expected to benefit subcontractor firms such as Manpower Group, Randstad, Adecco, Kelly Services, Allegis Global Solutions and a host of other boutique staffing firms which supply skilled manpower to technology companies in the US.
According to outsourcing advisors and experts, while almost half of the deals are likely to see delay, the others are expected to be renewed at a lower price as enterprises ask for discounts in roll-over contracts.
Thierry Delaporte's pay package would be around 34 per cent higher than the total compensation that Wipro CEO Abidali Neemuchwala received in financial year 2019-20 (FY20). It also brings the Wipro CEO's salary on par with other top IT firms such as Infosys and Cognizant.
The IT firm will soon initiate discussions with colleges to start the process from September.
As enterprises halt ongoing projects or cancel them, all staffers working on such projects are placed on the bench. In some cases, IT firms have to reduce billable staffers in a project as clients ask for scaling down support, leading to rise in reserved employees.
According to several industry sources in the know, expenses towards deploying contractual staffer, which used to account 10 per cent of the overall billable employee cost at IT firms, has fallen to around 3 per cent. IT firms typically use the contractual workers from staffing solutions providers or subcontractors.
In the mid-tier space, clients with weak balance sheets are likely to ask for price revision apart from delay in payment.
While Wipro will announce its fourth quarter (Q4) results along with annual financial statements on April 15, market leader TCS will hold its board meet the next day (April 16) for approval of its financial statements. Infosys is yet to inform investors the date it will announce its Q4 earnings.
Though there have been no cancellations of contracts by invoking the force majeure clause, a number of clients - especially in the worst-affected sectors like travel and hospitality, oil and gas, as well as manufacturing - have started asking for reducing level of IT support.
Though a weak dollar will lend some support to revenues and margins in FY21, the demand environment will outweigh any gain.
Stock market crash: TCS sheds $21 billion in market capitalisation, Infosys $7 billion and Wipro around $3 billion
While discretionary spend by global enterprises is likely to negatively impact all Indian IT firms, more revenues from products and less exposure to financial services segment are likely to lessen the impact for HCL Technologies and Tech Mahindra.
Some of external candidates being considered for the post of CEO include Bhaskar Ghosh of Accenture, Ritesh Idnani of Tech Mahindra, Ravi Kumar S of Infosys, and Nitin Rakesh of Mphasis, among others.
Experts are of the opinion that though digital services hold the future, the companies are likely to take a hit during the transition period.
Wipro Ventures is currently managed by Biplab Adhya and Venu Pemmaraju and has so far invested in 16 early to mid-stage start-ups. While 11 of these start-ups are in the US, four are in lsrael and one in lndia.