AppLabs to beef up headcount by 50%

 

CLOSE on the heels of Mahindra Satyam, another Hyderabad-based information technology company, AppLabs, is looking to beef up employee headcount.
The $100 million firm, which claims to be the largest software testing and quality management company in the world, is planning to increase staff strength by 50 per cent of its current workforce, chairman Sashi Reddi told Financial Chronicle.

"Markets have recovered strongly. We are seeing good traction in the US. We plan to hire about 1,000 people to service this growing demand in the coming one year," Reddi says. 60 per cent of the new employees are expected to be freshers.

AppLabs currently employs more than 2,000 employees around the world.
Of this, 1,650 work out of its global delivery centre based in Hyderabad. The company is looking to expand its facility in the city by investing Rs 12 crore.

Reddi says AppLabs would continue to focus on the US market, notwithstanding the hue and cry against outsourcing in that country.
The region currently contributes more than 60 per cent of company's turnover.

"Given the current size of our company, we cannot afford to shift our focus on too many markets. Once we have reached our desired levels of growth, we may think of expanding into other geographies," Reddi says.

The increase in US visa fees would raise costs for the company but would not impact the bottomline to a great extent, he contends.

Recently, the company had announced that it was planning to buy a US-based company for about $50 mil lion. Till date, it has ac quired Keylabs for $7 mil lion in 2005, IS Integra tion for $37 million in 2006 and ValueMinds for an undisclosed sum last month.

The global softwa re testing market is estimated to be around $6 billion and is growing at a rate of 20 per cent, which is far higher than the growth of general IT services market.

 

Infosys BPO to hire 550 employees

 

Infosys BPO said on Friday it would increase the total headcount of its Poland operations to 1,500 in next one year. "The company currently employees 950 people. In next 12 months, we should get to a level of around 1,500," said Infosys BPO MD and CEO Dandapani Swaminathan.

Capgemini hires 10,000, to recruit 7,000 more

Bullish on strong growth prospects in India, global IT consultancy Capgemini has hired 10,000 people so far in 2010 and plans to recruit another 7,000 by the year-end. "We have already hired more than 10,000 people as of July. We plan to recruit further 7,000 within this year," Capgemini India executive chairman Salil Parekh said.

   Placing emphasis on the importance of the Indian market in the group's growth strategy, Parekh said, "Capgemini India is an important resource centre to drive Capgemini's Rightshore model and is also the main innovation hub for the group."

   "Additionally, the domestic market in India has also seen a lot of traction. We have added more than 40 clients in the last 18 months. With such a lot of growth, we need to be in a position to service this and, hence, have stepped up the recruitment process," he said.

   Capgemini India's employee strength was at 26,000 in June 2010. It has a strong presence across seven cities in India.

IT companies prop up India Inc's headcount - 181 firms raise staff roll by just 62,696

 

DESPITE a revival in business, some of the biggest companies, including Reliance Industries, State Bank of India (SBI), HDFC Bank, ACC and Century Textiles, saw a drop in their headcount of employees in 2009-10.

Of the 181 companies that have filed their annual reports, in more than a third, 69 to be precise, the headcount dropped by 19,478, according to data provider Dataline. Despite this, however, the 181 companies together had 62,696 more on their rolls on March 31 this year than a year earlier.

Among companies that reported a staff contraction, SBI's was the sharpest at 5,597. Reliance was next with a drop of 1,314. The SBI data were a surprise, because it had announced during the year plans to hire 11,000 new hands.

Instead, its count went down be cause, as one of its officials explained, a large number of employees retired and only a 10th of the planned hiring could be fulfilled.

The official said that normally up to 7,000 employees retired every year from the bank. Presumably, that was the number that superannuated last year too. In contrast, only about 1,000 proba tionary officers were hired. The entire year saw no recruitment of clerical staff. Another large bank, Punjab National Bank (PNB), also reported a drop -of 1,277.

The overall addition of 62,696 on the rolls of the 181 companies is nothing much to write home about, when one takes into account the addition by the IT giants -Tata Consultancy Services (16,668), Wipro (10,261), Tech Mahindra (8,552), Infosys (6,837) and Mphasis (4,729). These four alone added 40,210 employees.
In other words, the remaining 177 companies added only 22,486. Not quite a significant number in a year of resurgence.

State Bank of India and PNB may have been exceptions, because other banks were adding to their rolls.
For example, Bank of Baroda added 2,122, IDBI Bank 2,012 and Dhanlaxmi Bank 1,873.

Gautam Ghosh, a Delhibased HR consultant, said companies were still cautious about hiring, though recruitment had picked up lately. "You notice a hiring momentum in IT, insurance and healthcare. In information technology, companies resumed recruitment halted during the economic slowdown," he said.

According to Achyut Menon, founder of Options Executive Search, a recruitment firm, there has been aggressive hiring by most sectors, except energy and retail. Companies in the education sector were now hiring in large numbers, he said.

Ghosh added that recruitments last year were generally for positions at the top and entry levels, more or less bypassing the middle rungs. He thought it would take some more time for middle management hiring to pick up.

"Companies recruit managers at the top level for strategic reasons, and they also need a lot of employees at the entry level for execution. The latter do not necessarily put pressure on the company's bottom line," he said.

Among other firms that saw declines are Thermax (1,121), Patni Computer (899), HDFC Bank (799), ACC (641), Bata India (519), Bajaj Hindusthan Sugar (389), Century Textiles (384), Balrampur Chini (325) and ABB (274). Ghosh said he expected the auto and infrastructure sectors to see more recruitment in the coming quarters.

 

Infosys to hire 36,000 people this year

 

 

In the first quarter, Infosys and its subsidiaries' gross addition stood at 8,859 employees, while the net addition was 1,026.

The company is also expanding its seat capacity.
According to Pai, 25,000 seats, with an investment of Rs 1,200 crore, are being added across Pune, Chennai, Mysore, Mangalore and Thiruvananthapuram.

Infosys has also acquired 202 acres of land in Sarjapur, near Bangalore, where it proposes to build a 25,000-seat SEZ facility in the first phase with an in vestment of Rs 1,600 crore to Rs 1,800 crore. "Work will begin in August-September this year and is scheduled to be operational by end-March, 2011," he said.

Cisco to hire 3,000 in 2 yrs

Mumbai: With a view to provide enhanced ICT services in India, networking giant Cisco Systems plans to hire 3,000 professionals over the next two years, a top company official said.

   "We are quite happy about our Indian operations. As Bangalore is the second head office for Cisco after California, we want to increase our headcount here. We plan to hire 3,000 more in the next two years," Cisco's chief globalisation officer and executive vice-president, Wim Elfrink, said here on Wednesday.

   Cisco's current headcount in India is 7,000 and plans are on track to take it up to 10,000 in the next two years.

Capgemini to hire over 4,000 by June

Capgemini, the Paris based IT services and consulting company, plans to hire more than 4,000 people for its India operations during this quarter, according to a senior official of the company.

The company's India headcount stood at 23,353 at the end of March, making India one of its largest centres. The company's headcount at its headquarters at 19,892 saw a drop of 0.7 per cent, whereas the India headcount grew by over 5 per cent in January - March (Q1). Capgemini India added 2,500 people in the first quarter. The total headcount of the company globally touched 91,792.

"India continues to develop in local and international business and is core to our Rightshore approach. We plan to see accelerating momentum in our headcount growth throughout the year," said Salil Parekh, executive chairman, Capgemini India.

This reflects the company's strategy to leverage its offshore presence. Onshore recruitment reduced by 11.5 per cent on a quarter-on-quarter basis.