Hyderabad: The $150 billion Indian IT industry has been adversely affected by the recent decisions taken by the Trump government in the United States. In order to provide more salaries to H1B employees and jobs to Americans, IT companies have adopted a “layoff” rule and are issuing ultimatums to employees in India, especially Hyderabad.
Most Indian companies depend on American markets and the destination of about 78 per cent of exports is the United States. In order to gain goodwill from the US Government, Infosys has already announced 10,000 jobs for Americans in the next two years. It has received appreciation from the White House. The IT major, which experienced 13.3 per cent growth in 2015-16, was disappointed with 8.3 per cent in 2016-17.
Now, majority of IT companies are targeting seniors—those with experience between 10 and 20 years. In the second phase, experts expect more jobs at lower levels to be affected.
As per reports, nearly 1,000 employees in level-6 or more, including designations such as group project managers, project managers and senior architects, will be directed to Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS).
Meanwhile, unskilled employees at other levels will lose their jobs by the end of this year.
Last month, during an internal meeting, Wipro heads announced that the performance of each employee will be reviewed and those whose performance doesn't match up to the required standard may lose their job. As per estimates, 10 per cent of the 1.81 lakh employees face this threat. However, Wipro is saying that it plans new recruitments soon.
Cognizant has already announced VRS policy and asked a few programme directors, associate vice presidents and senior vice presidents, amounting to a total of 1,000 executives, for VRS.
As per estimates of the IT industry, about 2.3 per cent of employees face this threat. Cognizant used to register 20 per cent growth rate; it recorded between 5-10 per cent in the last quarter.
France-based Capgemini, which took over I-Gate in 2015, is also trying to lay off employees. Capgemini has over 1.95 lakh employees, of which 1.13 lakh work in India. IT experts estimate a threat to 5 per cent of employees in India. About 200 employees in the Mumbai office have been issued notices for VRS.
