India’s IT industry, once the country’s most reliable and prolific job generator, has halted large-scale hiring. In a staggering reversal, the nation’s top five IT companies added just 17 net employees in the first nine months of this financial year. That’s a collapse from nearly 18,000 jobs created over the same period a year earlier, signalling a decisive shift in how the sector operates.
“Net new hiring will be very much lower now,” says Pareekh Jain, CEO, Pareekh Consulting. He adds: “There will be new hiring, but it will replace attrition and retirement. Net new hiring will be marginal. The companies will go forward with more or less stable headcount, the way it happens in other industries.”
It may look like a jobs crisis in India’s tech sector, but the reality is more complex. While the country’s biggest IT companies have sharply slowed hiring, global companies are expanding their India-based Global Capability Centres, or GCCs.
These centres, run by multinational corporations, handle technology, analytics, digital services, finance, research, development and strategy for parent companies around the world. They are creating new jobs, but for a different kind of worker: people with specialised skills in artificial intelligence, cloud computing and advanced engineering rather than large numbers of fresh graduates.
“GCCs are emerging as a key pillar of formal employment and skill development. We expect millions of new jobs by 2030 as centres expand across India and take on more strategic work in AI, cloud and digital technologies,” says Neeti Sharma, chief executive of TeamLease Digital, a leading tech staffing firm.
India is the largest GCC hub globally, hosting more than half of all such centres worldwide, and GCCs accounted for the vast majority of tech hiring in 2024 to 2025.
According to a TeamLease Digital analysis, India’s GCC ecosystem already employs around 1.9 million professionals and is projected to add between 2.8 million and 4 million jobs by 2030, with a strong focus on high-value engineering and innovation skills.
TeamLease Digital estimates that around 14 to 22 per cent of new hires in GCCs will be fresh graduates with digital skills in areas such as AI, cloud and data engineering, while mid-level professionals will make up the bulk of the workforce.
A Times of India analysis of staffing data suggests GCCs are increasing headcount by 18 to 27 per cent year on year.
“Over 100,000 of the tech sector’s new hires in 2024 to 2025 were in GCCs, highlighting that while traditional IT services slow down, GCCs are the primary drivers of net tech employment growth,” says a report by the Indian Brand Equity Foundation, a government body.
While GCCs in India are booming, they are largely seeking experienced, highly skilled professionals rather than large numbers of fresh graduates. Unlike traditional IT services firms, which thrived on mass entry-level recruitment, GCCs focus on roles in AI, cloud, data, cybersecurity and advanced programming.
Graduate hiring is selective, designed to groom future specialists rather than support large-scale delivery models. The shift underlines how the future of tech hiring in India is increasingly about skill depth.
“Companies are actively seeking professionals with expertise in artificial intelligence, cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity and data engineering. This is where the future of tech jobs is being created in India,” says Kapil Joshi, chief executive of Quess IT Staffing, a specialist tech recruitment firm.
To understand the scale of the slowdown at the Big Five, it helps to look back a decade. In the mid-2010s, adding tens of thousands of employees each year was not just normal, it was expected and seen as a measure of confidence in the future.
Tata Consultancy Services alone hired more than 60,000 employees in 2016, while Infosys and Wipro recruited between 20,000 and 30,000 people annually. Across the top firms, net hiring regularly topped 100,000, powered by large outsourcing contracts and steady demand from the United States and Europe.
The sector continued its hiring spree until financial year 2023, when the top five IT companies still added nearly 84,000 employees. Then the slowdown hit. Client budgets tightened, deal ramp-ups slowed, and firms began questioning whether relentless workforce expansion was necessary. By 2025, net hiring had fallen to barely 11,000.
In financial year 2026, the freeze has been virtually absolute. TCS cut more than 25,000 jobs in the first nine months, largely in mid-level and senior roles, while other firms recruited only small numbers compared with past cycles.
The contrast is stark. Hundreds of people a day once joined these firms. Now growth is effectively flat.
Clients, particularly in the United States and Europe, are cutting back on discretionary technology spending. Instead of launching new digital transformation projects, they are demanding better returns from existing systems and tighter delivery timelines.
At the same time, AI and automation are reshaping how work gets done at the Big Five. Tasks that once required large teams, including testing, maintenance, documentation and coding are increasingly handled by machines.
AI may not yet be driving rapid revenue growth, but it is reducing the need for hiring, especially at junior and mid levels.
Infosys chief executive Salil Parekh said in a recent earnings call that the company is focusing heavily on a narrow set of advanced AI skills as it builds platforms capable of performing complex tasks for clients with limited human intervention.
“We see a huge amount of opportunity,” Parekh says. “And so recruiting will continue with those skill sets. The distinction will be much more focused as people mature and get deeper in their career.”
Industry research suggests AI tools are already handling between 20 and 40 per cent of technical work in the broader tech sector in India.
TCS chairman N Chandrasekaran calls generative AI, which can create new content rather than just analyse information, “a civilisational shift”. Companies are increasingly adopting a model in which AI agents plan, act and solve problems alongside employees.
Many new roles will go largely to specialists in AI engineering, data science and advanced programming rather than to fresh graduates or generalist coders. At the same time, companies are retraining employees through internal programmes, upgrading skills rather than hiring.
According to Ray Wang, chief executive of Constellation Research, the industry is entering a “low-hire, low-fire” era.
While traditional IT services firms focus on leaner teams and specialised AI skills, GCCs are emerging as the sector’s main growth engine, creating high-value, innovation-led roles and helping India transition to a more complex, technology-driven job market.
The result is a mixed landscape for India’s tech talent. The era of mass hiring at legacy IT firms is over, but GCCs are offering strong opportunities for professionals with specialised, AI-era skills.