Indian IT hiring is back at four of five majors, while Wipro shrinks and bookings stall
The five largest Indian IT firms reported a combined net addition of 13,918 employees for the September quarter, up from 5,480 the quarter before. HCLTech added 6,450, Tech Mahindra 5,446, Infosys 4,480 and TCS 4,258. Wipro went the other way: headcount fell by 6,716 to 236,328, total bookings dropped 22.9% to $2,595 million, and large-deal bookings fell 58.6%. Wipro's CFO said the deflationary cycle in contracts is about 1.5 to two years old. TCS meanwhile reported annualised AI revenue of $3.1 billion and $9.6 billion in deal wins.
The split matters more than the total. Vendors that are hiring are betting on volume, and vendors that are shrinking while revenue is flat are passing AI productivity gains into lower unit prices, or they are keeping the savings as margin. Buyers should assume the second unless the contract says otherwise. This quarter, reopen any time-and-materials or FTE-based renewal and ask for outcome-based or output-based pricing with a stated AI productivity share. If your vendor is Wipro, get its delivery-team continuity commitments in writing before renewal, since its utilisation fell to 83.4% and its bench is moving.
A question for your shortlist: If AI coding tools cut the hours needed on my project by 20 to 30 percent, how does that show up in my invoice, and where in the contract is it written down?
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