Premium'Our net headcount stood at 3,538 as of the June quarter, after on-boarding 310 new people and we hope to maintain the pace of hiring in every quarter of the fiscal,' Happiest Minds executive vice-chairman Joseph Anantharaju says, as per a report
Bengaluru-based IT services firm Happiest Minds Technologies, which has been facing rising attrition levels of late, is planning to hire 300 techies in each of the next three quarters, its top management said, as reported by news agency PTI.
The Ashok Soota-promoted 11-year-old company had acute attrition of 14.7 per cent in the June quarter when its total headcount stood at 3,538, after net-adding 310 in the quarter to June.
However for Happiest Minds, on an annualised basis the employee retention level increased from 16.2 per cent in Q1 of FY'21 to 14.7 per cent now, but fell from Q4 of FY'21 when it was 12.4 per cent.
"We plan to add 300 people in each of the next three quarters of this fiscal. Our net headcount stood at 3,538 as of the June quarter, after on-boarding 310 new people and we hope to maintain the pace of hiring in every quarter of the fiscal," Happiest Minds executive vice-chairman Joseph Anantharaju told PTI.
Managing director and chief financial officer Venkatraman Narayanan chipped in saying hiring is necessitated by both by attrition of those who have spent two-six years with the company and they bagging new jobs with huge hikes, and also to meet the rising demand which led to much higher utilisation level of the existing resources, which was marginally down to 82.1 per cent in Q1 from 82.6 per cent in Q4 of FY21.
"So I am ready to budget for a net addition of 300 people in each of the next three quarters. Hope my sales team follow suit," Narayanan said.
Happiest Minds, which went public in the thick of the first wave of the pandemic last September with a primary share sale that was oversubscribed by 151 times, gave over 562 per cent in returns to the shareholders since then, whose number went by 1.25 lakh since the listing when it had just 2 lakh public shareholders, Narayanan said.
Anantharaju attributed the higher margin of 25 per cent in the June quarter to the pandemic-driven savings by way of lower overhead cost, and the overall positive positive rub-off that the the IT industry got from the crisis. He said the energy bill is down by ₹65 lakh a month, and there is also dip in rentals.
Meanwhile, India's biggest IT service companies Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, Wipro and HCL Technologies are expected to welcome more than 1.1 lakh freshers combined this year as hiring activity takes pace on the back of growing demand following robust deal wins as enterprises move to digital and invest more in cloud and cybersecurity along with increased attrition.
While TCS will be hiring over 40,000 freshers from campuses in India in the fiscal year 2021-22, Infosys plans to hire 35,000 college graduates for FY22 globally and Wipro's more than 10,000 people were lateral hires in the first quarter, while a little less than 2,000 freshers were onboarded.
On the other hand, fintech start-up BharatPe is offering several joining and referral perks, such as BMW bikes, Apple iPad Pro (with Pencil), Bose Headphone, and more to techies who would apply.
"The company, that is planning to launch a slew of products in the merchant and consumer lending space, will be tripling the strength of its Technology Team and hiring 100 more members," BharatPe said in a statement.
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