Thiruvananthapuram: Indian IT sector seems to have come back to its record-breaking hiring days, with top industry player Infosys projecting up to 1.8 lakh employees being hired by the five largest companies alone this year. "Growth is back and most companies are hiring in large numbers again. The top five companies are estimated to hire 1,60,000 to 1,80,000 new employees in the next 12 months," Infosys CEO Kris Gopalakrishnan said here. Such large-scale hiring activities were last witnessed in 2007 by Indian IT companies, after which they had to cut back on hiring and even prune their existing headcount to cope up with the economic slowdown. "In 2008, the industry saw growth coming down to single digit. Most IT companies stopped hiring employees and stopped expanding," Gopalakrishnan said at a discussion on 'Sustainable Development Strategies' organised by College of Architecture here.