Layoffs History in India by Indian IT Companies

Layoffs History in India by Indian IT Companies. TCS, Infosys, HCL Tech, Satyam, Patni, Mastek, Motorola, Capgemini, Sun, Yahoo, Hexaware, persistent and GlobalLogic layoff employees from India offices.

Please find compiled list of all layoffs across Indian IT companies. This list include layoffs from TCS, Infosys, HCL Tech, Satyam, Patni, Mastek, Motorola, Capgemini, Sun, Yahoo, Hexaware, persistent and GlobalLogic.

India’s biggest software exporter, TCS, has asked several employees at its UK office to leave, as the company prepares to trim its payroll costs and cope effectively with the recession.
India’s second largest software services firm Infosys Technologies has downsized 5 per cent workforce at Infosys Australia.
The subsidiary employs 360 people, a majority of them from Expert Information Services — the first acquisition Infosys Australia made six years ago.

IT services company HCL Technologies has asked 450 employees at its Delhi and Bangalore offices to leave. A majority of those asked to leave are on the bench.

According to a HCL Technologies executive, the company had sacked 400 people in Delhi and another 50 in Bangalore in the last one-two months. The firm had earlier asked those on the bench to get assigned to projects or face the prospect of being asked to leave the firm.
T

ainted Satyam Computer has decided to lay off employees from its sales division in order to meet operating expenses and clear its debts. Nearly 10 per cent of its claimed workforce of 53,000 is engaged in providing support functions

Last year, Patni Computer Systems too laid off over 400 employees citing non-performance issues.

Around 59 employees of IT service provider Mastek are said to have opted to leave the company, three days after they were shifted to `virtual bench’ because of slowdown.
Last month, Mastek announced that it is putting 425 employees on virtual bench for the next 12 months following a slowdown in demand. The company had given two days to the 425 employees on virtual bench, the option of leaving the organisation.

More than 200 people Motorola India had hired just a few months ago to drive its mobile handsets business were reportedly laid off late last year. The company is also reported to have issued pink slips to at least 100 of its 4,000 employees in India in December. I
The US mobile phone maker also confirmed that the India operations will also face job cuts as part of its plan to shed more than 3,000 global workforce.

IT consulting and software company Capgemini has reportedly laid-off around 2,000 employees over several months in Bangalore, Mumbai and Kolkata centres.
IT giant Sun Microsystems reportedly laid off over 150 employees in India in January. According to a news report, most of the laid off employees were software developers working at the company’s Bangalore office.

The news report adds that the company may go for another round of lay offs soon. This round is likely to impact support staff from departments like marketing, human resources and sales.
Global search engine and web services provider Yahoo in December last year laid off 45 people from its India operations as part of its worldwide firing policy due to global meltdown.
The pink slips were in line with the company’s guidance given in October for the fourth quarter of 2008, which hinted at terminating the services of about 1,500 employees worldwide during the current quarter.

Pune-based Hexaware Technologies too is reportedly trimming its headcount across India. At one of the meeting HR Head reportedly said that the company would be axing jobs and slashing salaries.

Pune-based Persistent Systems has begun evaluating employees in a manner that would enable it to justify any possible manpower restructuring, including a layoff. Persistent employs over 4,000 across nine development centres in India and abroad. According to human resource experts, such a decision possibly points to a layoff in light of the downturn, which has resulted into a downward revision of IT budgets.

GlobalLogic, one of the largest outsourced product development companies in India, has laid off about 125 employees. While 108 employees were asked to leave ‘due to poor grading in the appraisals’ concluded in October, another 17 were told to leave because their ‘skill sets fell obsolete’.

The over $100-million company, which has delivery centres in Noida, Nagpur and Pune, confirmed the layoffs but said the figure is 115. Over the last two years, Global-Logic reduced its headcount to 2,000 from 3,000.
Courtesy Indiatimes.com

US Recession and Indian IT

BANGALORE, INDIA: The signs are for all to see. US employment fell for the first time since 2003, manufacturing declined 5.3 percent, first time house buying - a good proxy for economic health - plunged 8.1 percent in December. Technically, it might not qualify as a recession, but according to Warren Buffet, "by common sense definition", the U.S. economy already is in a recession. A December report on the Indian tech sector by Morgan Stanley says the uncertainty in the United States may delay tech spends in the first half of 2008. With Indian IT salaries rising 10-15 percent a year, the overall operating margins have been reduced to six percent.

The major crisis in the US financial markets has had a ripple effect on all sectors and it might be a while before things start looking up. As Laksmi Narayanan, Nasscom chairman and VC of Cognizant said, "The current situation is not temporary. It is the new baseline. The industry will have to learn to operate under the new parameters." Anecdotal evidence suggests that fewer development projects from existing clients are coming through. The sales cycles have increased and winning new customers has become increasingly difficult. If there was a major watershed in the Indian IT Industry post Y2K, this is it. After the dizzying growth of the last 10 years, it is time to pause, reflect and realign strategies. If the industry has to survive, then it needs to adapt to the changing market scenarios quickly. Talk of a software upgrade. Diversify globally For far too long, Indian IT industry has focused on the US. Yes, US accounts for about 60 percent of the total IT spending.

However, IT spending of American companies is slipping with the slump. It's also been a long time since US firms embraced the outsourcing model, so further growth seems very limited. With that in mind, the Indian IT firms need to focus their attention on the other markets, especially Europe. Using UK as the base, software firms can branch out onto mainland Europe. There will be a certain amount of language and cultural resistance in countries like France, Germany, and Nsetherlands, that Indian firms will need to grapple with. Eastern Europe has a large number of skilled software programmers. Many global firms want to continue offshoring, however they are looking at non-India based partners as a way of addressing the issues of talent shortage, salary hikes, and high turnover which are becoming more acute in the Indian IT sector. Such firms are even willing to back development centers run by Indian giants elsewhere, purely from the standpoint of flexibility, business continuity, and seamlessness in global operations. Hence, Indian IT companies should establish a strong presence globally through delivery centers in emerging regions, so as to maintain its existing business and gain a bigger portion of the IT revenues pie.

Local foray it makes sense to enter the local markets decisively. Indian IT market is growing at a compounded annual rate of 21 percent. Indian companies have been traditionally slow in embracing IT, but are now adopting technology at a breakneck speed. A few large multi-million dollar contracts like the Bharti-IBM, Dabur-Accenture and SBI-TCS deals should make the rest of industry sit up and recognize the potential of the Indian market. South East Asia is another region where IT big-wigs can focus their energies. China, Korea, Japan, Australia are big markets, and Indian firms should make a firm thrust in capturing them. The region can not only be tapped for local markets, but also be used as satellite facilities to support their Indian counterparts. Tighten recruitment and retention processes Since the last few years, the composition of IT resource pool has undergone a substantial shift. Earlier, many reputed companies only recruited engineers through campus placements.

However, the demand for Indian IT services kept getting bigger. Post dot-com bust and 9/11 tragedy, business conditions in the US became tougher, and companies wanted to focus on key operational and strategic functions and outsource technical application development and support to the experts. India as an IT destination offered notable cost advantage, better flexibility, 24/7 support and improved accountability. Figures suggest that only 25 percent of the total graduates in India have employable 'production-worthy' skills.

Fewer contracts in a sluggish economic scenario would automatically drive down the break-neck speed of recruitment. However, instead of a complete stop to all recruitment, the IT industry should use this period for a meaningful introspection and a substantial realignment of its hiring and retention processes. Address the skills shortage Concurrently, this quiet period needs to be used to get the existing resource pool ready for the next big wave. Most programmers are too caught up in the daily quotidian tasks to catch up on the latest technical advances, and appreciate breakthroughs that will sweep the IT world. To address this gap, workshops and technical trainings to educate the workforce should be held at regular intervals. Similar sessions on soft-skills and cultural orientation programs should be conducted to make the people more customer-centric. Service Oriented Architecture, Software-as-a-Service, Cloud Paradigm (or desktop virtualization) are emerging as some of the biggest IT trends.

Additionally, platform consolidation is the biggest IT change that many CIOs have on their radar. Much of the work coming along will be governed by these trends. The software designers should be brought up to speed on these new trends, and the programmers trained on the technologies that underline these trends. Upside down in a Flat World Cut-throat competition from global players and the falling dollar has squeezed the margins for typical run-of-the-mill work. Yes, consulting is a niche that eventually all Indian IT companies would want to get into. But basic factors like maturity (dearth of experienced consultants), perception (image of Indian IT firms as application developers and implementors) and location (failing of global delivery model in primarily client based work) will hinder any real inroads into the consulting space. The trick is to innovate - not necessarily do different things, but do things differently.

In that regard, the focus on innovation of some of the top Indian companies is a step in the right direction. Wipro's Applied Innovation Framework lays down a roadmap for systemic change to deliver sustainable business benefits. Summing IT up This is indeed a tricky time for the Indian IT industry, but there's no real reason to panic. The IT guns showed great character and resilience during the years following the dot com bust. They are wise enough to read the signs and realize that change is in order. With a slight course correction and an unswerving view on the long-term, the India IT industry can emerge stronger and bigger.