Infosys not planning mass layoffs: CEO Salil Parekh clears the air as TCS set to fire 12,000 employees

Infosys has no plans for mass layoffs, its CEO Salil Parekh confirmed in an interview with the Times of India, a stance that stands in sharp contrast to the recent workforce cuts at competitors like Tata Consultancy Services.

Parekh credited the company’s stability to "strategic investments in AI and reskilling its workforce," which he said have allowed Infosys to "stay slightly ahead."

This strategy is backed by a robust hiring plan, as per the tech giant's CEO. Parekh revealed the company has already made over 17,000 gross hires in the fiscal first quarter and is aiming to bring on approximately 20,000 college graduates this year.

At the core of this approach is a push into artificial intelligence. According to Parekh, over 275,000 employees have already received AI training, a move he believes "opens significant opportunities for our workforce." He also pointed to client-side "partner consolidation" as another factor that will create new roles for reskilled employees.

The company's headcount, Parekh maintained, continues to grow. He assured that a focus on internal efficiency allows Infosys to "put more people on new projects" without altering its fundamental utilization model, reinforcing a strategy of growth through talent development over workforce reduction.

Regarding how the company ensures humans remain in the loop when to comes to low and medium-intensity coding in the age of AI, Parek said the company is seeing "5 per cent to 15 per cent productivity gains in software development". He said human intervention remains crucial "in complex, integrated systems."

TCS layoffs

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has lost Rs 28,148.72 crore from its market valuation in two days after the company announced that it will lay off about 12,000 employees of its global workforce this year.

As of June 30, 2025, the TCS workforce stood at 6,13,069. It increased its workforce by 5,000 in the recently concluded June quarter.

The move is part of the company's broader strategy to become a "future-ready organisation", focusing on investments in technology, AI deployment, market expansion, and workforce realignment, TCS said in a statement.

"Towards this, a number of reskilling and redeployment initiatives have been underway. As part of this journey, we will also be releasing associates from the organisation whose deployment may not be feasible. This will impact about 2 per cent of our global workforce, primarily in the middle and the senior grades, over the course of the year," it said.

TCS will provide appropriate benefits, outplacement, counselling, and support to the impacted employees, it added

The move comes at a time when India's top IT services companies have delivered single-digit revenue growth in Q1FY26, capping off a somewhat sobering June quarter as macroeconomic instability and geopolitical tensions weighed on global tech demand and delayed client decision-making.

With PTI inputs