Wipro's Hiring Plans for This Year on Track

Bangalore: Wipro said it has given salary hikes of up to 8 percent to offshore employees and hiring plans for the year are "on track".

"We have given wage hike of eight percent to offshore employees ... and three per cent hike (to those in western markets) ... Overall about 1.6 percent has been the impact in terms of all the manpower cost related increases that we have given because there were some promotions etc in Q1," Wipro Executive Director and CFO Suresh Senapaty said here.

He added that the country's third largest company is "on track" with its hiring plans for the year. He, however, declined to give specific numbers.

Larger rival Infosys had said it will stick to its plan of hiring 35,000 people this year, but has pushed the decision on wage hikes to October on account of global economic uncertainties.

On the contrary, country's largest software firm TCS had not only given hikes to the tune of 8 percent, but also confident of meeting its target of hiring 50,000 people.

Wipro today announced a net profit at 1,580.2 crore for the first quarter ended June 30, 2012 (up 18.37 percent), while total income from operation rose by 24.37 percent to 10,619.6 crore.

The IT services segment, which constituted 78 percent of the revenues) had 1,38,552 employees as of June 30, 2012 with an addition of 2,632 people in the quarter.

Wipro saw a dip in attrition (last 12 months) to 15.6 percent in Q1 FY13 from 22.6 percent in the same period last year. Wipro Executive Vice President and HR Pratik Kumar said this was not unusual and corresponded with end of appraisal cycle, where those who have not performed are asked to leave. The company said it will continue to hire local talent, which is about 38 percent of their onsite manpower strength.

Over the past months, anti-outsourcing campaign against Indian technology companies has gained momentum in the U.S. and the European Union, main markets for domestic software and IT service companies.

Politicians and governments in these countries have been objecting to offshoring of work by their companies to countries like India so as to retain jobs back home. Industry experts have called such criticism a political rhetoric.

Most Indian technology companies have been consistently hiring more and more in the western countries over the past few years to blunt the criticism of 'taking away' jobs. Western markets account for more than 50 percent of revenues of Indian IT companies.

Check out here for Most Expensive Employees in the World

Source: PTI