The hiring plans come on the back of a strong deal pipeline that the company sees across various segments. “We expect to hire around 3,200 people in the second half of the year...Pipeline looks encouraging. For instance, in the UK, we had won a short-term project related to COVID-19 from one of the government departments...We have now won another big order and we expect to add a significant number of people,” HGS Global CFO Srinivas Palakodeti said.

He added for this new client, the company is adding 700 staff in the UK, and these roles will be all work-from-home. “There is also a lot of interest in terms of digital services, it could be social care, engaging customers on any of the social media platforms...online reputation management...we have won some engagements there,” he said.

Palakodeti added the hiring is across almost all the geographies - the US, Canada, Jamaica, the Philippines and India. At the end of September 2020 quarter, the company’s total headcount stood at 39,578 with 45 per cent staff in India.

The Philippines accounted for 24.9 per cent of the headcount, followed by US/Jamaica (18.8 per cent), Canada (7.4 per cent) and UK/Europe (3.9 per cent).

Palakodeti explained that some of the hiring is also on account of open season enrolment in the US, where open enrolment season is a period when people can enrol in a health insurance plan.

This is when employees of organisations can also make changes to their elected benefit options. Companies like HGS ramp up hiring to address the spike in workload related to the healthcare industry during this time. Earlier this week, HGS announced its financial results for September quarter.

Its consolidated net profit rose 65.6 per cent year-on-year to Rs 81.3 crore in September quarter - the highest-ever reported by the company. Revenue increased 9.4 per cent to Rs 1,332.5 crore during the quarter under review from Rs 1,217.9 crore in July-September a year ago.