Number of crorepati employees falls in IT firms on slowdown blues

Bengaluru, 26 June: Slowdown in IT industry and subsequent underperformance of IT stocks in the bourses have led to a dip in number of crorepati employees in Infosys and Wipro.

Unlike past years, FY24 saw lesser number of employees earning less than Rs 1 crore, annual reports of IT firms showed.

Bengaluru-headquartered Infosys saw 103 of its senior staffers earning more than Rs 1 crore in the last financial year. This was a drop of 16% from the FY22 when the company produced 123 crorepati employees. In FY23, 124 employees of Infosys had drawn salaries of more than Rs 1 crore.

During the last fiscal year, Infosys added 12 employees drawing more than Rs 1 crore, transferred from Danske Bank with whom it won a big IT outsourcing deal.

For Wipro, number of employees drawing more than Rs 1 crore stood at 81, down from 92 in FY22.

According to norms, companies have to disclose in their annual reports about the number of employees drawing more than Rs 1 crore in a financial year.

Last fiscal year was one of the slowest growth periods for the $245 billion strong Indian IT industry. With inflationary pressure persisting, global enterprises in key geographies including the US and Europe have cut down their IT spending.

“Uncertainty around the inflation trajectory weighed on client decisionmaking and revival in discretionary spending, with a full-fledged demand recovery now expected only in CY25/FY26,” Emkay Global wrote in a note.

In the last fiscal year, TCS posted a revenue growth of 3.4 per cent, while Infosys’ revenue grew 1.9 per cent during this period. Wipro’s revenue from IT services saw a fall of 4.4 per cent during the last fiscal year. Most mid-tier IT firms’ revenue growth also fell during this period.

The top four IT firms reduced their headcount by around 70,000 people during this period.