With the Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) layoffs capturing the headlines, Salil Parekh, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at Infosys, has shed light on whether or not his company will follow suit.
In an interview with The Times of India, Parekh was asked whether Infosys would also be cutting jobs. The CEO stated that, through strategic investments in AI and reskilling its workforce, the company has been able to “stay slightly ahead” of its competitors.
Parekh also confirmed that Infosys is still planning on hiring 20,000 freshers by the end of the fiscal year 2025-2026 (FY26).
“We recruited over 17,000 people (gross hiring) in the first quarter and plan to bring in about 20,000 college graduates this year. Our focus remains firmly on reskilling, particularly in AI, where we’ve already trained over 275,000 employees at various levels,” Parekh explained.
With the rapid changes in the macroeconomic landscape and the evolving use of artificial intelligence (AI), Parekh emphasised the need to invest.
“It’s critical to invest. We made significant investments in digital and AI, building agents and language models, and reskilling employees,” Parekh elaborated. “We also focused on internal efficiency to support these investments without major disruptions. This approach allows us to put more people on new projects.”
Despite the rising worries regarding AI replacing the human presence in the world of IT, Parekh stated that the human presence remains as crucial as ever.
“We’re seeing 5% to 15% productivity gains in software development through AI and automation, and even more in customer service and knowledge tasks. But human involvement remains central, especially in complex, integrated systems.”