Bangalore: To battle the rising attrition, technology major Infosys has revised its hiring plan for this fiscal year to 40,000 - up 11 percent from the 36,000 projected earlier. "We are revising our hiring plans, as we need enough bench strength to cash in new opportunities," T V Mohandas Pai, Director (HR), said. The company will hire 11,000 people in the current quarter (October-December) as part of this plan, he added. This will include around 1,500 people outside India. Most of the overseas hiring will be in China and about 600 people in U.S. Infosys had an employee strength of 122,468 by the end of the second quarter, 16 percent higher than the corresponding period last year. The company plans to reduce the utilisation rate to 77-79 percent from 82 percent as of now. "We need to reduce the utilisation rate to have adequate bench strength for new projects," Pai said. On the attrition front, while 5,400 people left the organisation in the first quarter of this financial year, the number came down to 4200 in the second quarter - showing a decline of 22 percent on a quarterly basis. "Attrition rate is expected to fall in the remaining two quarters of this financial year on the back of promotion opportunities for employees," Pai said. The company plans to promote 12,000 people in the remaining period of the year, he added. However, the company pointed out that it would not have any impact on the operating margin, as the outgo had been factored in from the beginning of the year. "The total outgo for the company on the pay rise front due to promotions will be in the range of $78 million," Pai said. The company is also working on talent management programme called, 'Talent Stratgey 2015', to get feedback from employees for future policy making. "We are going to organise a talent workshop soon, which will have participation from all employees and they will give us feedback on present policies along with proposals for future enterprise," added Pai.