Infosys Technologies is being sued again by a former senior employee for discrimination on the basis of age, gender and ethnicity while hiring in the US. The suit filed by Jill Prejean, vice-president of talent acquisition, has alleged that the company discriminated and retaliated when she tried to point out the discriminatory actions. Infosys' motion to dismiss the claims made by Prejean was rejected by a judge from the United States District Court Southern District of New York.
Wipro on Tuesday asked its employees to be in office at least three days a week. It has informed its employees that offices will be open for four days a week, starting October 10. In an e-mail to its employees, Wipro said: "Starting October 10, Wipro's office will be open Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, & Fridays. We will not be open on Wednesdays." The company said in the e-mail, seen by Business Standard, that the move will "help us enjoy the camaraderie and team spirit of connecting in person while maintaining hybrid work flexibility".
India Inc is not in the dark about moonlighting employees. According to a forensic accountant, companies can easily turn to experts and deploy digital tools that can be used to check if an employee is doing a second job or not - reaffirming fears of many who are wary of the practice in the context of the recent sacking of moonlighters by IT major Wipro. Arpinder Singh, global markets and India leader, forensic and integrity services, EY, said that EY had been involved with several companies to gauge moonlighting.
The Indian IT industry recorded 25.2 per cent employee attrition in FY22 and that pain will continue as it loses talent to other industries, said a report by TeamLease. The attrition in the contract staffing industry is predicted to touch at least 50 per cent in FY23 compared to 49 per cent in FY22, said the report called 'Brain Drain: Tackling the great talent exodus in IT sector'. Company policies, payment and work flexibility is making talent move, as non-technology firms step up demand. "Tech talent in non-tech companies will see 3X growth in the coming years, opening up approx 1 million new tech jobs by 2025.
Double-digits salary hikes are making a post-pandemic comeback on the back of a buoyant business outlook in 2023, according to global professional services firm Aon. Aon's latest "Salary Increase Survey in India" has not only projected a 10.4 per cent average hike across sectors for 2023, but also identified actual hikes in 2022 at 10.6 per cent as against its previous projection of 9.9 per cent in February. The figure of 10.6 per cent is the highest since 2012, whereas the 10.4 per cent levels projected for 2023 were last seen in 2015.
India's largest IT services firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is mandating its employees to be back in office for three days a week. Teams will have to work with their team leaders, and the human resources team which three day's best suits them. In an email that went out to employees over the past two days, which Business Standard has seen, said: "As part of our return to office initiative, all TCSers are expected to work from office at least three days in a week."
Close to six months since the launch of Tata Neu, the super application (app) from Tata Sons Group is all set for a revamp. The highlights include a reimagined rewards programme or NeuPass, a more seamless user experience by increasing the digital maturity of brands, adding more brands to the platform, and hiring category leaders to drive the next phase of growth. When it comes to brands, Titan will join Tata Neu by Diwali. Tata Motors and Air India will be on board after the Festival of Lights.
When Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) was conceived last December, the idea was to reduce the dominance of e-commerce giants like Amazon and Flipkart. It was also to bring in a level-playing field for small merchants in India's fragmented but fast-growing $1-trillion retail market. However, those goals have changed now as large e-commerce players such as Flipkart, Amazon and Ecom Express are in various levels of talks with the ONDC team. They want to form partnerships like integrating with the network as well as providing their expertise to build it, according to the industry sources.
Online pharmacy platform Tata 1mg turned a unicorn after raising close to $40 million in a funding round led by Tata Digital, media reports said. The company was yet to comment on the valuations till the time of going to press. 1mg has raised $230.8 million across 16 rounds, including this one.
The IT major will give an anniversary hike for lateral hires as they complete a year at the company. And, these employees were entitled to the annual salary revision that followed the anniversary hikes.
A few days back, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman urged the start-up community and public to deal in cryptocurrency with caution because everything that was floating around was not currency. In the first week of August, the country's top nine crypto exchange platforms were summoned by the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) in Hyderabad. The exchanges were questioned for money laundering, especially over a number of Indian non-banking financial companies and their fintech partners for predatory lending practices in violation of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines and by using tele-callers who misuse personal data and use abusive language to extort high interest rates from the loan takers.
After a recent fall in profit, Masayoshi Son of SoftBank announced that the Japanese tech investor will look at dramatic cost-cutting. Before he does that, investments in India for calendar year 2022 (CY22) will fall radically, observed sources in the know. Last year, the company had invested around $3.2-3.5 billion in the Indian start-up ecosystem - almost 10 per cent of the total investment the sector received. For CY22, the investments may not even touch $1 billion.
Microsoft has become the first global Big Tech company to join the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), an Indian government initiative for developing a first-of-its-kind open network for digital commerce. The world's second-largest technology firm intends to introduce social e-commerce via its app in the Indian market later this year. ONDC is expected to open to the public in Bengaluru over the next fortnight as it enters into the next phase of the pilot for further fine-tuning before rollouts in other cities, according to a source in the know.
The company's decision may impact new projects, which are likely to get delayed, said sources in the know. Among the IT players that work with Macy's are Accenture, Cognizant, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), and Infosys. Macy's is among the top 5-10 clients of these companies.
Online food delivery aggregator Zomato is on an internal rebranding exercise by moving to a multiple chief executive structure for its businesses that will be housed under a larger organisation called Eternal. In an internal message to employees, Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Deepinder Goyal said the company is at a stage where it has matured from running a single business to running multiple and large companies. The restructuring is happening after the shareholder approved the Blinkit acquisition.
A quick look at the Q1FY23 performance of top-tier IT services players shows that they are still far away from getting a grip on managing attrition. Talent retention has eroded not only their margins but also any gains they may have made from rupee depreciation. Despite robust growth numbers and strong deal pipelines, margins for all the players -- TCS, Infosys, HCL Technologies and Wipro -- have continued to shrink at a pace that has had the street surprised.
The dairy major is transforming into a full-fledged F&B and fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) player, reports Vinay Umarji.
Earlier last month, for the first time ever, an anonymous hacker was served with a restraining order as a non-fungible token (NFT), reports Shivani Shinde.
Tata Neu, the super app from the Tata group, has been downloaded by over 7 million users within seven weeks of its launch. And, the company wants to ramp this up to 150 million users in the next two years, said senior executives of Tata Digital in an internal magazine of the Tata group. According to data from App Annie, a mobile app tracking platform, the Tata Neu app has been downloaded by over 11 million users.
'A lot of the emphasis when we hire graduates is the learning for these new technologies -- whether it's cloud and digital data analytics, cybersecurity, or IoT, but also some of the new ones, such as Metaverse or other newer areas.'