In yet another hurrah for the India story, Corporate India is aggressively widening its employee base, just as salaries have seen an unprecedented boom.A study of the top 100 Indian corporates conducted by this newspaper reveals that India Inc has added 1,03,423 employees to 5,44,969 between March 2004 and March 2005 — an increase of 23.42 per cent.Sunrise companies have outshone the rest in adding employees though brick and mortar companies too are in the fray. IT major Infosys leads the pack having added 8,801 employees, as textile major Mahavir Spinning (6,500), tobacco giant ITC Ltd (6,500), aluminium firm Hindalco (6,012), IT company Satyam (5,132) and ICICI Bank (4,391) too saw high additions.IT and ITES firms continue to see the maximum bustle in the hiring space. While Infosys and Satyam posted a 37.64 per cent and 36.57 per cent rise in workforce, Aztec Software registered a whopping 200 per cent jump. I-Flex (85 per cent), Hexaware (63 per cent), Sonata Software (43.84 per cent) and Patni Computers (36.24 per cent) too were dominant employers.Analysts too are bullish about the hiring trend. ‘‘Now everybody is hiring, from core manufacturing, IT, BPO, finance services to pharma, right across all segments. Our fundamentals are very strong. There is a real boom across all the sectors,’’ said Shiv Agrawal, CEO, ABC Consultants.Small IT firms share this optimism, forceful in their hiring thanks to the high attrition rates of their larger counterparts. Even Infosys has a 7 to 8 per cent attrition. ‘‘For IT firms, it would be difficult to sustain higher salaries along with the increase in employee additions,’’ Agrawal said.Added Ajay Mallapurkar, Mumbai centre head, Ma Foi Management Consultants: “Until a disparity exists in salaries between the West and Asia, countries like India would benefit from it. Obviously, the services sector is hiring more and more people because of India’s large pool of skilled and cheap manpower. But the investments in services will also spill over to manufacturing.’’In the banking space, private banks are racing ahead of the public ones in hiring. ICICI Bank posted a 32 per cent rise in its staff numbers while HDFC at 59 per cent, UTI Bank (38 per cent) and Centurion Bank of Punjab (23 per cent) too hired aggressively.But after many voluntary retirement schemes (VRS), public banks’ hiring has slowed. Oriental Bank posted a 7 per cent rise while Indian Overseas Bank added a mere 0.58 per cent.But Agrawal attributed this to a lower attrition rate in public banks. ‘‘PSU banks are hiring at the junior and entry levels while in private banks, attrition and hiring is rampant.’’ Mallapurkar related this to public sector banks’ embracing new technologies, after which they needed less manpower. ‘‘Initially, banks like Citi and HSBC were more into corporate banking. But after the entry of ICICI, UTI and HDFC Bank and their aggressive retail banking, MNC banks followed suit. That requires higher manpower,” he said.
