IT companies emerge as top employers in India

The company had earlier said it had increased its headcount in the last year and aims to balance it to revenue from a longer-term perspective.

Information technology (IT) companies have emerged as top job creators in India, with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) listed as the top employer in the country. The company added 65,750 employees, taking the total to 592,195 this year. Other than TCS, Infosys, Wipro and HCLTech are the top employers, according to the 2022 Burgundy Private Hurun India report. These four companies together added 208,469 staffers, comprising 63% of total job additions in the pool.

The IT companies have also topped in terms of women employees, adding just over 85,000 in 2022. Around 35.5% of the total workforce of TCS comprises women employees. The company had earlier said it had increased its headcount in the last year and aims to balance it to revenue from a longer-term perspective.

“The topline of these 500 companies is equivalent to 29% of India’s GDP, and these companies employ up to 1.5% of the country’s total workforce,” Amitabh Chaudhary, MD & CEO of Axis Bank, said. Hurun India has launched the report in partnership with the lender.

Despite the dominance of IT companies as employment generators, Reliance Industries (RIL) has made the most additions to its workforce. The company has added over 100,000 employees in 2022, taking the total to 340,000. On the other hand, infrastructure major Larsen & Toubro has seen its employee strength reduce by over 110,000 to 252,217 employees.

RIL, HDFC Bank and security services provider SIS have moved up a rank each on the list, while L&T and Motherson Sumi Systems have dropped a place.

HDFC Bank is the sole financial services provider to have figured on the list. The companies from the list of 500 employ 730,000 people, an average of 14,500 employees.

In value terms, oil-to-telecom major RIL has emerged as the top company, with the company valued at Rs 17.25 trillion, up 3.6% y-o-y, followed by TCS at Rs 11.7 trillion, down 11% y-o-y. The total value of the top 10 companies remained mostly unchanged at Rs 72 trillion, forming 37% of India’s gross domestic product (GDP).

The value assigned to the company indicates that the investors believe it would deliver that amount of profit in 10 years.

In the unlisted space, Serum Institute of India (SII) emerged at the top, with the company valued at Rs 2.2 trillion, up 20% y-o-y, followed by edtech startup Byju’s valued at Rs 1.8 trillion, up 35% y-o-y.

“The sectors that enjoyed strong growth are energy, retail, hospitality and consumer goods. The software and services sector was the hardest hit and cumulatively lost Rs 6 trillion over last year. On the back of inflation and looming recession, Indian IT outsourcing companies are expected to go slow on closing big-ticket deals,” Anas Rahman Junaid, MD of Hurun India, said.