TCS sees no footprint of recession on its demand: TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan

BENGALURU:  Even as the investors and analysts are worried about the impact of high inflation and recession fears on the IT industry, top executives in the industry say that there are no immediate concerns. 
The country’s top IT services company, which kicked off the earnings season on Friday, is holding senior-level discussions about the recession.

TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan said the company is seeing steady demand. “All projects that are currently going on indicate a very steady demand environment. We are also constantly polling to see whether there is an early indication of softening, and as of now there is nothing,” he said.

However, now people are increasingly discussing recession, but ‘we don’t see an immediate footprint of the recession on our demand side’, he added. TCS says its pipeline is quite strong and the nature of deals is also fairly strong. Attrition is still a concern for the IT industry, and the TCS CEO says this will continue in the next quarter too.

TCS reported an attrition rate of 19.7% in the past 12 months and Gopinathan said this should be considered from a seasonality perspective, as its junior employees leave for higher studies or other areas during this period.

“It will be H2 when we will start seeing some amount of more meaningful moderation of it. That’s our immediate short-term view on attrition but from a medium long term, we think that both the supply side as well as the demand side is easing up,” he added.

The IT company, which announced a hiring target of 40,000 for FY23, said it is on track to hire the same numbers. It added over 14,000 employees in the first quarter, and its workforce stood at 6,06,331. The company has also given a salary increase of 5-8% to its employees.