The Nifty IT has been one of the worst-performing indices on the bourses this calendar year. Rising concerns of a potential global recession, which investors fear can dampen demand for export-facing domestic information technology (IT) giants, have sent the index down over 30 per cent on a year-to-date basis. By comparison, the Nifty50 Index has shed 2.8 per cent during the period, reveals data by ACE Equity.
'We will have to wait for at least two quarters of data to ascertain whether the recovery is real and sustainable.'
Corporate India is indicating cautious hiring in the March quarter of 2023 as concerns rise over possible recession and steady inflation, a survey said on Thursday. According to the ManpowerGroup Employment Outlook Survey, based on interviews with nearly 3,030 public and private employers, hiring intentions will decrease in the quarter both on year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter basis. During the quarter, 48 per cent employers expect to increase their staffing levels, 16 per cent anticipate a decrease in hiring intent and 34 per cent do not anticipate any change in hiring, resulting in a net employment outlook of 32 per cent.
The Indian information technology industry grew 33 per cent year-on-year in 2004-05 to $28.5 billion with exports growing at 36 per cent to $18.5 billion, according to a survey by technology publication group Dataquest.
India had the advantage in software and China in hardware, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said.
Watts Humphrey, noted software expert from US, on Wednesday predicted a bright future for the Indian software industry, but feared that there was likely to be a shortfall of nearly 250,000 software professionals by 2008.
Adani Enterprises' proposed Rs 20,000 crore (Rs 200 billion) fundraising via fresh issue of equity shares through a public offer would be the fourth biggest by Indian companies, excluding banks and non-banking financial companies.
Attacks on cyber cafes to protest against the controversial content of websites will adversely affect the Information Technology industry, according to an Internet service providers' body.
Asia's richest man Gautam Adani, besides looking at opportunities to expand his vast empire, is hooked on ChatGPT - the programme that trawls vast amount of information to generate natural-sounding text on virtually anything - from crafting jokes to writing ad copy, debugging computer code, to even generating poems and essays. Adani, whose conglomerate has in recent years diversified from mines, ports and power plants into airports, data centres and defence, penned musing from his visit to Davos to attend the World Economic Forum meeting. "From a meetings perspective, this was perhaps my busiest WEF as I met over a dozen heads of states and several business leaders," he wrote on LinkedIn, talking of new geopolitical couplings, climate change and tight-lipped evangelists and AI.
Global tech major IBM, which employs over a lakh individuals in India, on Wednesday termed moonlighting an unethical practice. Moonlighting, the practice of taking up secondary jobs after the regular work hours, has been highlighted by many tech companies of late. IBM's managing director for India and South Asia, Sandip Patel said, at the time of joining, the company's employees sign an agreement saying they will be working only for IBM.
Investors seem to be shying away from stocks of companies in the 'digital' space with most counters that comprise the Nifty India Digital index giving negative returns over the past year. The index tracks the performance of a portfolio of stocks that broadly represent the 'digital theme' within basic industries, such as software, e-commerce, IT-enabled services, industrial electronics, and telecom services. The fall in some of these stocks over the past year has been steep; the sharpest decline of around 60 per cent was seen in shares of PB Fintech (parent company of Policybazaar).
India has the best hiring outlook globally, second only to Brazil, with 54 per cent of companies surveyed planning to hire in the December quarter as against 51 per cent in the September quarter, according to a report by global staffing firm ManpowerGroup. The report titled "ManpowerGroup Employment Outlook Survey" showed that India has the strongest net employment outlook for the December quarter in the Asia-Pacific region, followed by China (46 per cent), and Australia (38 per cent). The global net employment outlook in the December quarter would stand at 30 per cent, down by three percentage points from the June-September quarter, yet six percentage points higher than the same period last year, the staffing firm said.
As employers eye quality talent, employees will enjoy an upper hand in demanding high pay, better benefits, remote work options and other perks, predicts Navneet Singh, CEO, Avsar, a talent management firm.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta, summed it up well as he explained the reason for the company sacking 13 per cent of its employees. He said no one predicted that the boom for digital services during the Covid pandemic would die out. "Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended.
One reason for resistance to moonlighting is that WFH calls into question the necessity for the thick layers of middle and senior management which run most businesses, argues Devangshu Datta.
Mirroring the increase in the earnings of their companies, the chief executives and promoters of India's top listed firms gained handsomely from the boom last financial year. Their remuneration includes salaries, perquisites or perks, and profit-linked commissions.
'Companies are being forced to pay higher salaries to retain and hire employees due to a big rise in attrition in the industry.'
'The Russian attack might be a wakeup call for Europe.'
The 136-year-old baby, argues Shyam G Menon, is taking a tiny step to tackling the biggest dread of old age: Change.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's call to make this decade a "techade" for India and the push for 5G, semiconductors and transformation through digital services is going to boost the technology sector in the country, industry players said on Monday. Modi, in his speech on the 76th Independence Day, touched upon all-round development of technology in the country, from 5G to push for electronic chips, laying of optical fibre cable (OFC) network across villages and enablement of digital entrepreneurship in villages through Common Services Centres, making the present decade as "techade" for India. Homegrown mobile devices maker Lava International's Chairman and Managing Director Hari Om Rai said electronics and technology sectors create about $4 trillion of revenue.
After withdrawing the personal data protection bill, the government is hopeful of getting a new legislation passed by the next Budget session of Parliament, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has said. The government on Wednesday withdrew the Personal Data Protection Bill from the Lok Sabha. The Joint Committee on Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, headed by BJP member P P Chaudhary, had tabled its report in Lok Sabha on December 16, 2021.
After withdrawing the personal data protection bill, the government is hopeful of getting a new legislation passed by the next Budget session of Parliament, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has said.
The Reserve Bank of India's rate-setting panel on Wednesday started discussions to firm up the next bi-monthly monetary policy amid expectations that it might retain status quo on interest rate but change its monetary policy stance amid rising inflation on account of geopolitical developments.
This is the second time in a week that the Karnataka state capital is witnessing such severe waterlogging.
These jobs don't necessarily require a degree in engineering or specialisation in coding.
For Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) - India's largest and the world's second-largest IT services provider - the attrition rate touched an all-time high of 17.4 per cent in Q4FY22. The management, following the announcement of the Q4 results, has warned that the attrition situation could become even worse before any improvement. According to analysts, the short term, the attrition rate at TCS could even touch 20 per cent.
How should one billion Indians, for whom deprivation has become an inescapable way of life, join us in celebrating 75 years of Independence? And where do we go from here? asks Kalyan Singhal.
'After Covid, people started looking for bigger houses with pools and landscaped gardens.' 'Even middle class buyers are looking at plots of land in smaller towns.'
Tata Consultancy Services, India's largest software exporter, hired 100,000 freshers in the financial year 2021-22, more than in any other year. That means an average of 8,300 trainees joining the company every month. This is not merely a mathematical calculation: hiring of freshers at the top IT companies is no longer a compressed affair confined to the campus season.
In a major relief to Indian information technology (IT) companies operating in Australia, Canberra has agreed to amend its domestic laws to stop taxing offshore income of such Indian companies, as part of the free trade deal inked. This may lead to savings up to $200 million each year for over 100 Indian IT companies operating in Australia. "The Government of Australia has agreed to amend the domestic taxation law to stop the taxation of offshore income of Indian firms providing technical services to Australia. "This will resolve the issue that the Indian government has raised about the double taxation avoidance agreement (DTAA) between the two governments for the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of fiscal evasion with respect to taxes on income," said a commerce ministry official.
Employee costs for Indian IT services players have touched an all-time high as salaries soar in their effort to retain talent. Engineer salaries are going through the roof. According to a news report, Infosys, which reported a 27.7 per cent attrition rate for the fourth quarter of FY22, plans to have an average salary hike of 12-13 per cent. High potential employees will get increases of 22-23 per cent.
For Paris-headquartered IT services major Capgemini, India has always been the backbone of its services delivery for its global clients, but the company is focused on driving more value from India as it gears up its engineering research and development (R&D) presence worldwide with its acquisition of Altran Technologies. The company, which has about 149,000 employees in India, is looking to hire 60,000 associates this year. Of them, 30,000 will be recruits from campuses and the rest lateral entrants. For Ashwin Yardi, chief executive officer India, Capgemini, the focus is to make sure that the India unit is aligned with the global plans of repositioning the company as a hub of engineering R&D, operational technology, and IT.
'For the first time, all major countries are discovering India's indispensability to their own foreign policy interests.'
'When resources are few; when frugality demands repairing a broken thing rather than replacing it with a brand new and expensive option, enterprising commoners in rural and urban India improvise on a daily basis and solve their problems with whatever they have,' observes Shivanand Kanavi.
As US President Joe Biden launched a new trade deal with 12 Indo-Pacific nations, including India, to enhance trade, economic and investment opportunities, China, which sees the pact as a threat to its dominance in the region, went on the offensive against it, promising more opening up, while the official media here termed it as "economic Nato".
Led by Trent, which hit its lifetime-high recently, apparel retailers have gained between 10 per cent and 36 per cent over the past three weeks. Given the network of physical stores, these stocks shall be major beneficiaries of the unlock theme, with most states doing away with Covid restrictions. Amid improving footfall, analysts expect the sector to post double-digit growth in FY23.