Latest news with #CVijayakumar
Time of India
6 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
Job losses: How AI has painfully disrupted dreams of young software engineering graduates
IT CEOs have indicated that AI-led productivity is changing the business model, with revenue growth and headcount growth being de-linked. 'The last couple of years, we have been challenging our teams on how you can deliver twice the revenue and half of the people,' said HCLTech CEO C Vijayakumar in February. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads ( Originally published on May 31, 2025 ) As a story going viral recently recounts, back in the early 1990s, Infosys cofounder Nandan Nilekani had prodded and pestered actor and playwright Girish Karnad, a distant relative, to buy into the then-obscure software firm's told to journalist Rollo Romig, author of I Am on the Hit List: Murder and Myth-making in South India, Karnad eventually gave in and bought some shares of Infosys. Within 10 years, as Infosys—and India's burgeoning IT sector—g rew, the share prices skyrocketed and helped Karnad out of a lower-middle class living to greater comforts, like a house of his There is no other word that encapsulates what C++, Java and Python did for India and millions of folks like Karnad. Beyond shareholders, zeros and ones carried with them the aspirations of millions of youth who gained not just employment, but a living that lifted their families out of the lower middle-class trap, powered by fancy salaries, lucrative stock options and promise of foreign far so good. Then, out of nowhere, came the threat from artificial intelligence (AI). India's middle-class dreams, written in the promise of software, is now under threat from advancements of that very jobs that millions of students had taken for granted as an entry to a long and successful career aren't quite there anymore, and a thirty-year dream is starting to lose drastic shift is leaving a bloody trail of laid-off employees, changing job descriptions and under-skilled young (name changed), a techie in Bengaluru, is job hunting. This isn't the best time to be looking for one. But he does not have a choice as his company, a unicorn, fired him five months ago, along with close to a dozen last time he was looking for a job was in 2018 when he was a final-year engineering student. Back then, all that the unicorns he was interviewing for wanted was solid programming six years, he was laid off and there are more things he is worried about than getting the basics right. 'Even if I get a job, how long can I hold on before the company decides otherwise? Is this going to be the end of my career?'Things are worse for junior developers just entering the workforce where AI tools can do a much better job. Their days are now marked by anxiety, fear and insecurity that threatens careers, lest they don't keep up with the change, and at times even when they (name changed), a manual tester in a Bengaluru-based IT services firm a decade ago, remembers how worried they were when automation was introduced. 'We were worried that our jobs would be lost,' she never came to pass in the five years she spent in the firm before moving to consulting. But today, testing is one of the areas seeing the most automation, and others such as frontand back-end development are soon likely to of this, naturally, is leading to mental health Singh Saluja, president of IT professionals' welfare association Nascent IT Employees Senate (NITES), has been seeing increasing anxiety in young professionals with up to five years of experience, who were beginning to feel they were being gradually sidelined or replaced.'Many are unsure whether their job will still exist in the next six months or a year,' Saluja says.'Every single project that you do, they track how many AI tools or AI integrations you are using. They don't always say it, but the bottom line is that if you don't, your job is at risk,' says long Reddit threads, software developers have been sharing how their department heads emphasise using AI tools and are removing teams that were doing documentation, something that has since been easily the moment it is each to their stay relevant, many are upskilling and learning AI-first thinking and how to create workflows using AI. Platforms such as Scaler Academy, Newton School and 100xEngineers are seeing huge demand for their online courses on AI and ML.'It is a six-month weekend course, which is a mix of lectures and hands-on exercises,' says Sridev Ramesh, cofounder, new-a g e schools profit, engineering colleges that mushroomed across the country over the last few decades are just not equipped for this transition, and that is resulting in students charting their own Rachit (last name withheld to protect identity), a second-year computer science student. He was clear that regular engineering colleges might not help. After preparing for IIT-JEE, he decided to pursue a four-year undergraduate degree with Newton School of Technology, which focuses on avid programmer from Class 8, he taught himself Java and then Python, and is currently interning at one of the top AI startups in India and in his words 'is loving it'.As Nishant Chandra, CEO, Newton School, points out, the ecosystem is changing fast and students need to change with it. Chandra reckons that unfortunately about 90% of the colleges are not forward-looking, and that will impact the (name changed), a third-year engineering student, and his batchmates often discuss what AI would do to their prospects. 'We are still a year from when we have to face it, but at present, we are unsure what we can do,' he who hails from a tier-3 town in Kerala, is doing computer science in Coimbatore. Ask him if the college is taking additional initiatives to equip them, and he is confused. 'We have not heard anything from the college. Maybe we will see something before we start placements next year,' he by the time reality hits, it might be too late for students like Sharma, CEO, TeamLease Digital, says most engineering graduates are not completely ready for AI jobs.'More than 60% of these students don't have enough hands-on knowledge and experience,' says Sharma, adding that beyond college degrees, what's needed is certifications in AI, cloud, security, or data science, working on real projects (like sharing code on GitHub), and joining hackathons or inter nships. 'Students who keep learning and can show real projects or skills will have the best chance of getting hired in today's job market.'That's not going to be easy.'We can't just learn one or two skills and assume that it will take us through the next five years,' says Savita Hor tikar, global head of talent acquisition at the AI company Fractal, adding that adapting to the new reality of 'continuous learning' is often harder for experienced professionals than CEOs have indicated that AI-led productivity is changing the business model, with revenue growth and headcount growth being de-linked. 'The last couple of years, we have been challenging our teams on how you can deliver twice the revenue and half of the people,' said HCLTech CEO C Vijayakumar in means AI taking over grunt work and humans focusing on strategy, ethics and innovation, says Roop Kaistha, regional managing director-APAC at recruitment firm is going to complicate is home to the second largest pool of software developers in the world, with 5.8 million professionals. It also produces around 1.5 million fresh engineers every year. However, just 10% of them have the ability to secure jobs, according to a TeamLease the question of higher-level output is going to be a pipe dream unless both the individual and the system change their companies and institutions need to work together and create courses that match what businesses actually use now, says TeamLease's Pai, director of Takshashila Institution, a centre for research and education on public policy, says that as long as companies and workers are prepared to learn, adapt and adjust, India will benefit from the AI revolution just as it has benefited from previous turns of the tech Sherikar, head of corporate development, Sonata Software, says self-skilling has also become nonnegotiable with AI-readiness now being a baseline expectation.'Skilling programmes must evolve from being theoretical to being outcome-focused, anchored in the realities of a tech-driven, rapidly changing business landscape,' she says.'While we have a number of skilling programmes underway, I think they are too disaggregated,' Sangeeta Gupta, SVP & chief strategy officer of Nasscom, recently told ET. 'You need a much more top-down thinking on skilling, not just for the top-end of AI, which is all the data scientists and that kind of work, but how will the workingage population be using AI more effectively in the day-to-day operations?'Until that happens, the pain will A Damodaran, professor, economics, IIM-Bangalore, says, 'We have seen automation disrupting businesses historically. The biggest was textiles and then factories, where automation led to job losses. In factories, before automation, many of the workers were handling hazardous materials, and nobody voluntarily did that. And as history would show, people found other jobs. That will happen again.'Unfortunately for the next generation of millions who were betting on software jobs, history will unfold far too slowly.
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
India's HCLTech jumps on strong revenue growth outlook
(Reuters) -Shares of HCLTech jumped 8% on Wednesday after India's third-largest IT firm delivered a strong revenue growth forecast, standing out in a sector weighed down by cautious outlooks from bigger rivals. India's $283 billion IT sector is staring at a potential slowdown as U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff policy threatens to hurt growth in the United States, the biggest market for the tech companies. Companies like Infosys and Wipro have forecast a weak year ahead, saying retail and manufacturing clients will be more exposed to tariff-related impact. HCLTech, in contrast, forecast revenue growth of 2% to 5% for fiscal 2026, while analysts, on average, were expecting a rise of 0-2% as per LSEG data. Estimates were revised down from projections of a growth of 3%-5% after larger peer Infosys flagged growth concerns last week. "While putting the fears of a washout FY26 to rest, it implies HCLTech would outperform both TCS and Infosys at the upper of its guidance range," analysts at Motilal Oswal said. Rival Wipro, which only gives quarterly forecast, projected its revenue to fall between 1.5% and 3.5% in the first quarter. Market leader TCS does not give a forecast. The company expects to see "large opportunities" as clients use generative AI and other technologies to reduce costs in the tariff-driven environment, CEO C Vijayakumar said in a post-earnings conference call. "Overall commentary suggests it will continue to deliver leading growth" among the top IT firms, analysts at Dolat Capital said. HCLTech stock was on track for its best day since September 2020, leading gains on the Nifty IT index and the benchmark Nifty 50, which rose 4.4% and 0.2%, respectively. Shares of TCS, Infosys and Wipro were up between 3%-4%. ($1 = 85.2510 Indian rupees) Sign in to access your portfolio
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Business Standard
24-04-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
Indian IT firms use AI to drive sales growth with fewer new hires
Indian IT outsourcing companies, which employ millions, are tapping artificial intelligence to boost efficiency and reduce the need for more workers to grow their business. HCL Technologies Ltd. and LTIMindtree Ltd. are among companies saying they need fewer new staff to keep revenue increasing. The firms, which make their profits from non-core business processes and IT outsourcing projects from corporations in the US and Europe, have integrated AI tools and are already reaping the benefits of greater efficiency. HCL grew its service revenue 4.8 per cent in the fiscal year through March even as it reduced headcount by 1.8 per cent. 'That's the non-linearity that we want to build on an ongoing basis,' Chief Executive Officer C Vijayakumar told analysts on a call this week. Smaller peer LTIMindtree reduced headcount by 2.9 per cent in the first three months of the year from the previous quarter. Chief Operating Officer Nachiket Deshpande told analysts that staff growth may not be linear with revenue growth, citing AI-led productivity improvements. For India's IT giants, employee salaries constitute their biggest expense, and hiring plans have long been seen as an indicator of good times ahead for the firms. India's IT sector has boomed over the past two decades, making the industry one of the biggest job creators in the world's most populous country. To be sure, many companies still say they will boost recruiting. Infosys Ltd. expects to add 20,000 entry-level employees this financial year, more than the 15,000 it hired last year. Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. didn't commit to a number, but said it plans to hire more from college campuses this year despite a challenging economic environment. HCL may gain more efficiencies from AI than some larger software-focused rivals, as it gets a bigger share of its revenue from product engineering and IT infrastructure management. AI is boosting efficiency at digital process operations by as much as 50 per cent and as much as 25 per cent at software development, Vijayakumar said. HCL also said its AI offerings were helping it gain a larger share of its clients' IT budgets. 'There was incremental business from almost all the renewals that we signed,' Vijayakumar said. It expects annual revenue to grow 2 per cent to 5 per cent, the highest forecast amid peers.
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Business Standard
23-04-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
HCLTech up 7% post Q4 results; Stock sees best day since 2019; Key details
Shares of HCL Technologies rallied over 7 per cent on Monday after its bottom line for the fourth quarter of the previous financial year met the street's expectations, while the revenue growth for the year came in line with guidance. HCLTech's stock rose as much as 7.4 per cent during the day to ₹1,590 per share, the biggest intraday gain since September 14, 2019, according to Bloomberg data. The stock trimmed gains to trade 6.6 per cent higher at ₹1,577 apiece, compared to a 0.39 per cent advance in Nifty50 as of 10:05 AM. The IT counter snapped its one-day fall on Wednesday to continue the 21 per cent recovery from its lows of 1,302, which it hit earlier this month. The stock has fallen 17.4 per cent this year, compared to a 2.9 per cent advance in the benchmark Nifty50. The IT major has a total market capitalisation of ₹4.2 trillion, according to BSE data. HCLTech Q4FY25 results: Key numbers here: HCL Technologies reported an 8.10 per cent rise in net profit to ₹4,309 crore for the quarter ended March 2025 (Q4FY25), compared to ₹3,986.00 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous year. Revenue for the quarter increased by 6.13 per cent to ₹30,246.00 crore from ₹28,499.00 crore. For the full year ended March 2025, net profit grew 10.81 per cent to ₹17,399.00 crore, up from ₹15,702.00 crore in the previous year. Annual revenue rose 6.50 per cent to ₹1,17,055.00 crore from ₹1,09,913.00 crore in the year ended March 2024. Also Read HCLTech guidance The IT giant expects revenue growth to be in the range of 2 per cent to 5 per cent on a constant currency basis. That is lower than the guidance it provided over the past few years, but still higher than its larger rival, Infosys, which expects to grow between 0 per cent and 3 per cent. 'While there has been no specific impact so far, this will play out much faster in the consumer and manufacturing sectors. No vertical will be left behind,' Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Managing Director C Vijayakumar said at a news conference on Tuesday. HCLTech deal pipeline The total contract value was $2.9 billion during the fourth quarter and $9.2 billion for the full year. The CEO said the top end of the guidance accounts for the fact that deal closures will be as expected, while the lower end considers macroeconomic uncertainty. Manufacturing, retail, and consumer packaged goods businesses contributed 19 per cent and 9.8 per cent to the company's top line for the financial year ending March 31. Result analysis: Citi on HCLTech Q4FY25 Forward-looking indicators remain mixed, according to Citi. While the new deal total contract value was strong in the fourth quarter, it declined 5 per cent year-on-year. Headcount dropped 2 per cent year-on-year, and revenue guidance stands at 2–5 per cent growth. Management flagged a highly uncertain environment but remains focused on opportunities, it said. Citi has revised FY26/FY27 EPS estimates down by around 2 per cent and lowered the target multiple to 22x (from 23x), setting a new target price of ₹1,510. HCL Technologies, along with Infosys, remains Citi's preferred pick among large-cap IT stocks. HCL Technologies' Q4 FY25 results were slightly below expectations on growth, but strong deal wins stood out. Nomura has cut its FY26–27 earnings per share (EPS) estimates by around 2 per cent and lowered the target price to ₹1,670 from ₹1,840, citing rising macroeconomic uncertainty. The stock currently trades at 20x FY27 EPS.
Business Standard
23-04-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
HCL Tech posts over 6% sequential fall in Q4 PAT; board OKs dividend of Rs 18/share
HCL Technologies has reported 6.2% fall in net income to Rs 4,307 crore on a despite a 1.2% increase in revenues to Rs 30,246 crore in Q4 FY25 as compared with Q3 FY25. In dollar terms, the company has posted revenue of $3,498.2 million, down 1% QoQ. In constant currency (CC) terms, the revenue is lower by 0.8% sequentially. EBIT declined by 6.5% to Rs 5,442 crore in the fourth quarter of FY25 from Rs 5,821 crore recorded in the third quarter of the same year. As compared with Q4 FY25, the companys revenue and net income are higher by 6.1% and 8.1%, respectively. The companys ROIC, on LTM basis, was at 37.9% (up 411 basis points YoY) and that of the Services division was 45.5% (up 376 basis points YoY). On LTM basis, HCLs operational cash flow (OCF) was $2,632 million and the free cash flow was $2,501 million. FCF to net income ratio was at 123%. The board of the company has declared a dividend of Rs 18 per share, marking it the 89th consecutive quarter of dividend pay-out. The companys TCV of new deal wins for Q4 FY25 was $2,995 million. With net additions of 2,665, the companys total headcount stood at 223,420 as on 31 March 2025. LTM attrition rate was at 13%. HCL Tech has recorded 10.8% rise in net income to Rs 17,390 crore on a 6.5% increase in revenue to Rs 117,055 crore in FY25 as compared with FY24. C Vijayakumar CEO & managing director, HCLTech, said: HCLTech grew the fastest among our peers for the second year in a row as we witnessed yet another year of disciplined execution. We delivered on our FY25 guidance with revenue growth of 4.7% in constant currency and EBIT margin of 18.3%. HCL Software growth continues to accelerate as it grew 3.5% CC this year. During this quarter, our services business delivered healthy growth of 0.7% QoQ CC amidst volatile market conditions. We saw very strong new bookings of $3B this quarter catalyzed by our AI propositions and integrated GTM organization that was set up at the start of the fiscal year. HCL Technologies (HCL) empowers global enterprises with technology for the next decade, today. HCL offers its services and products through three business units: IT and Business Services (ITBS), Engineering and R&D Services (ERS) and Products & Platforms (P&P). The scrip jumped 6.69% to currently trade at Rs 1579.05 on the BSE.
