Business - Infy to offer single-digit salary hikes

P.P.Thimmaya

BANGALORE: Infosys Technologies, India’s second biggest software company, will offer single-digit salary hikes next financial year, joining its Top IT companies I Recession hits IT companies

peers, including TCS and Wipro, that have indicated that they would either defer salary hikes, or look at 7-8% hikes, in order to cope with a lower demand for their services in the US and Europe, their key markets.

“Wage inflation will be lower in the coming fiscal and will be in single digits. It will be difficult to predict whether it will be in low or high single digits,” Sandeep Mahindroo, senior manager (investor relations), Infosys, said at Credit Suisse’s recently held annual technology conference.

“Pressure on account of salary costs will abate in the coming fiscal.” While Wipro implemented a 7-8% increase in salaries for its offshore employees during the second quarter of the current fiscal, the country’s biggest tech firm, TCS, has already indicated that hikes will be in single digit.

Investment bank Cowen and Co recently noted that TCS might be looking at no wage increase at all during the next financial year.

The Indian IT services industry has been under severe pressure during the past few months, as customers deferred new IT projects and delayed their outsourcing decisions.

Wage hikes in the Indian IT services industry have traditionally been in the range of 13-15%. For many of the smaller and mid-tier IT companies, the wage pressures have been a lot higher as they have to pay more for skilled professionals.