Sacked Wipro employee alleges harassment

An ex-employee of Wipro has filed a harassment case with the Electronics City police against some senior officials of the company after his services were terminated, reports Bangalore Mirror. Ram Manohar G, a native of Hyderabad, has alleged that he was confined to a room and harassed by his seniors, and was finally forced to quit. The 37 year old techie had been working as a team leader in the organization for the past 15 months.

According to Ram, he joined Wipro on Dec 3, 2007 and was unlawfully sacked on March 10 this year. Earlier he was working with MindTree in Bangalore. In his complaint, he alleged that he was confined to a room for a couple of hours at a stretch on several occasions by the higher-ups, and asked each time to resign. "It all started when recession hit the IT business. As far as my knowledge goes, some seven to eight thousand employees have been sacked during the last couple of months. But looking at my 11 years of experience and good track record, I was not really bothered about my services being terminated," he said.

In his complaint, he said, "I was confined by Anuradha Raju (Assistant Manager, TED, Testing Services, BFSI) in a conference hall inside the campus and was forced to sign on some blank papers. When I asked for the reason, she threatened that they would blacklist my name with NASSCOM and ensure that I did not get a job elsewhere."

Ram has also accused Ganesh Halapeti (Senior Project Manager, AXA, Australia) of abusing him in vulgar language over the phone. "He threatened that if I did not sign on the blank papers, my career would be ruined. I was also ordered to come to the office and work despite being sick." He also approached the HR Department about the incident, but no one paid heed to his grievance. "After I was sacked for no proper reason, I am in a state of shock and am facing acute financial problems."

Saurabh Govil, Senior Vice-President (HR), Wipro Technologies said, "We have not seen the complaint and would not like to comment before seeing it. The ex-employee in question, Ram Mohan, was employed with Wipro. We will not be able to provide any specific information on the individual due to employee confidentiality."

Govil said that the company would provide all the necessary co-operation and support to the investigating authorities in the matter. "We have a very robust process to deal with employee grievances. We have not had any complaints of this nature ever before. This may be an isolated case," he said.
Source: SiliconIndia

Hackers prey on job aspirants

One man's recession is a conman's opportunity. Twenty-two year old Naresh Kothari (name changed), who works for a mid-sized IT firm, learnt this the hard way.

He was desperately seeking a change for the past few months. Having posted his resume on popular job sites like naukri, monster and jobsahead, he hoped to land a new job soon. So, he was elated to get an email from IT services major HCL Technologies stating that his “offer letter” was being dispatched. He was needed in Noida with some documents on August 24, for which an air ticket would be sent.

All he had to do was to deposit a cheque of Rs 5,250 as refundable security in a particular bank by August 12.

CON-JOBS
(How the job fraudsters work)
* Email ID databases can bought online and offline
* They can also be spoofed — made to appear as someone else’s ID
* Hackers can take advantage of typos, odd words, phrases
* Users can be led to fake websites by cyber-squatters

Could he have asked for more? He shared the good news with some friends. One of them, who happened to work in HCL, Tech smelt a rat since his company had never asked for a deposit. So he dug deeper, tapping his friends in the HR department and alerted Kothari, who promptly wised up and attempted to verify the email sender's details. He is yet to receive a reply. He may never get one simply because HCL Technologies did not send the email.

Ravi Shankar B, senior VP & HR Head, HCL (India), acknowledges that “such fraudulent mails cheat innocent job aspirants, misleading them into giving money with the promise of providing jobs... ". These activities, he added, also end up tarnishing a company’s image, though it plays no part in the scam. HCL Tech is working with the police to curb such malpractices.

Kothari is not a lone case. Earlier this year, some job aspirants had received a similar email, purportedly sent from India's third-largest IT firm Wipro Technologies, too. The IT major also issued a note cautioning aspirants to avoid falling prey to fraudsters.

With rising unemployment prompting more people to apply online for jobs, hackers are targeting corporate job sites and even setting up fake sites to collect applicants' personal information – a process known as phishing.

They are even duping gullible aspirants by asking them to deposit cash in banks as refundable security deposits. But can't the money be traced back to them? It's here that many unemployed people succumb to the lure of ads like “mailto:work@home and earn up to Rs 25,000..." work@home and earn up to Rs 25,000... ” and so on.

Work-at-home schemes, notes the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), attract otherwise innocent individuals, causing them to unwittingly become part of criminal schemes. Victims are often hired to process payments, transfer funds or “reship products”. These job scams involve the victims receiving and cashing fraudulent checks, transferring illegally obtained funds for the criminals, or receiving stolen merchandise and shipping it to other criminals.

Related phishing schemes have also been found using keywords like Google Cash Club, Make Money with Google, Google Money Monster, and Google Home Income. Google has issued an advisory on its blog alerting users to this scam.

Most people are smart enough to ignore such emails, naukri.com cofounder and CEO Sanjeev Bikhchandani pointed out. "However, I must clarify that no such emails are sent from naukri.com. Our website has enough filters to identify such emails. In fact, these emails are sent out by using the email IDs that have been misappropriated from our database,” he said.

He added that whenever his company sent out emails, it “categorically advises our members in a footnote not to pay any money”. In the case of any misuse, the company informs the police as a general practice. “Having said that, no system is foolproof. So we advise our members to exercise caution," he pointed out.

Sanjay Modi, Managing Director, Monster India (SEA, Middle East) concurs: “We maintain a high level of security or we take immediate actions in such cases."

Abhinav Karnwal, Product Marketing Manager, Trend Micro (APAC), noted that such incidents can occur in several ways. Legitimate sites can be hacked by an expert or people can hire hackers (who can be located on the internet and bought for a fee) to steal databases or email IDs from legitimate sites. Alternatively, databases of email IDs can be bought online and offline too through backdoor channels.

Because of the relatively open nature of web technology, it is very easy for criminals to fake web pages with convincing graphics, cautioned Shantanu Ghosh, VP, India Product Operations, Symantec. He advises users to be suspicious of obvious typos in text, odd words or phrases or the feeling that the site just doesn't look right. It's easy to steal graphics, but thieves are often very clumsy writers, Ghosh noted. "If you ever see an IP number in a URL, leave the site immediately. It is almost certainly a fraudulent site. Another method to ensure that you are on the correct site is to check if there is an ‘s’ after the ‘http’ in the URL. This code often appears in e-commerce websites and essentially means that all transactions are secure and the site is legitimate,” he adds.

“Such things do not target any particular company. It is easy for spammers to send spam mails and entice people to click on them. These compromise the users specially when there are not many jobs in the economy,” said Nitin Jyoti, manager, McAfee Avert Labs. He advises users to verify the legitimacy of the mail but writing back to the person or meeting the company representative in person to validate the mail.

In short, if something is too good to be true, then it probably is.
Source: BusinessStandard

Indian cos lay off a net 1.31 lakh staff in 3 months

Indian manufacturing and service sector firms laid off a net 1.31 lakh employees during April-June period, mainly in textiles, gem and jewellery sectors as the exports continued to shrink, a labour ministry report said.

During the April-June, as many as 1.54 lakh employees lost jobs in textile sector followed by about 34,000 persons losing jobs in IT and BPO sectors.

However, there was slight increase in employment in leather, automobiles and handloom, powerloom sectors during the quarter, it said.

"The maximum decline in employment is seen in textiles sector where it has declined by 1.54 lakh during April-June over March, 2009," the report said. The Labour Ministry, which collected data from 3,003 units spread over 21 towns in 11 states, found that employment in surveyed firms declined by 0.29 per cent during April-June. The ministry's employment survey, which revealed about 5 lakh job losses in India after September 2008 global crisis, had earlier found that about 2.5 lakh persons got jobs in January-March period this year.

It said 0.38 lakh jobs were lost in April 2009 and 1.57 lakh in May 2009, while 0.64 lakh were hired in June 2009.

In textiles and IT/BPO sectors, the average monthly decline in employment during April-June over Jan-March 2009 was at 0.63 percent and 0.34 percent respectively.

The report said in the non-exporting units, including in metals and automobile sectors, the employment has, however, slightly increased during the quarter.

India's flagship outsourcing sector hits tough times

Source: EconomicTimes
These are tough times for India's flagship outsourcing industry whose skilled, low-cost workforce helped plant the country on the global business map.

With the world in the grip of the worst economic slump since the 1930s, revenue growth from outsourcing -- subcontracting work to a third-party company -- is slowing sharply after years of posting scorching double-digit increases.

"IT budgets are still being cut and consumers will need a lot more persuading before they can feel confident enough to loosen purse strings," Richard Gordon, head of global forecasting at Gartner consultancy, said.

"The full impact of the global recession on the IT services and telecommunications sectors is still emerging," he added in a recent outlook.

Now, the National Association of Software and Service Companies, or Nasscom, India's top outsourcing body, projects the sector's export revenues will rise by just four to seven percent this year to at most 50 billion dollars.

That's down sharply from the 16 percent logged in the last financial year to March and the 30 percent rise the industry clocked annually for most of the decade as the country became a back office to the world.

Nasscom says global companies are showing reluctance to authorise new spending -- even cash that reduce costs by taking advantage of India's cheaper English-speaking educated labour force.

"Worldwide information technology spending growth is expected to come down further in 2009 and 2010," Som Mittal, head of Nasscom, said.

The outsourcing sector has been particularly hard hit by the recession in the United States, which accounts for 60 percent of the Indian industry's revenues.

The industry has made India a top business destination by offering software development and information technology, engineering and design, and business process outsourcing (BPO).

But with the global slump hitting spending, there are fewer credit card transactions and airline tickets to process and lower demand for software design, sales calls, help desks, accounting and legal services.

India's largest software exporter, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), and other companies forecast a difficult business climate despite announcing better-than-expected quarterly profits. Their profits increased, helped by tight cost management, even though revenue growth slowed.

"Global conditions are weak," TCS chief executive S. Ramadorai said after the results. "Recovery isn't something that's going to happen very soon."

And Amitabh Chaudhry, chief executive of Infosys BPO, in a recent interview admitted the business environment was "much tougher" than in past years.

Technology Partners International, a global sourcing advisory firm, said the international banking, oil and gas, food and drink and other sectors have all slowed their outsourcing.

According to Nasscom, the industry is also facing other challenges such as rising protectionist sentiment -- especially in the United States.

Indian outsourcing companies have already started focusing on the home market to drive growth.

The domestic market is still dwarfed by the export market but it is growing at a much faster pace as India's relatively closed economy has been less hard hit by the global slowdown.

In the last financial year, the outsourcing industry racked up exports of 47 million dollars while the domestic business added another 11.8 billion dollars in revenue.

Domestic outsourcing industry revenues are expected to grow by up to 18 percent this year to reach 14 billion dollars.

The focus "is definitely on the domestic segment and unexplored markets like South America, West Asia and blocks of Europe", said Nasscom's Mittal.

The sector, which accounts for nearly six percent of India's GDP, has played a key role in fuelling the country's new middle class affluence, employing two million people directly and eight million indirectly.

Longer term, the industry is still upbeat about its prospects.

Nasscom and management consultancy firm McKinsey said in a joint report the outsourcing industry could quadruple its revenues to 225 billion dollars by 2020 with the majority coming from exports.

For techies, losing a job means rebooting career

In April this year, when the Infosys management asked Sijo Joseph to make up his mind on whether he wanted to quit the company, Sijo was not devastated; in fact, he was happy about it. Sijo finally got an excuse to quit the job. Sijo had been planning to quit the job by June in order to realise his dreams of being a film director. So, when the company “during one of those appraisal exercises” asked him if he wanted to quit, it made the decision easier for him. Sijo, like many others, had graduated during the IT boom time and worked for Infosys — first in Thiruvananthapuram for a year, and later in Bangalore.

But with the job pressure becoming unbearable, courtesy recession, he decided to quit and make films. “I have become my own boss now,” Sijo told.

With two musical albums in the last one month and an ad film for a Cochin-based firm to his credit, the 26-yearold is off to a flying start.

Sijo has also worked as an assistant director for a recently released Malayalam movie Crazy Gopalan, which had some big names from Malayalam film industry. “I am better off than before,” said the ex-techie. “If you can’t climb Everest make your own Everest. That’s my slogan.” But Sijo’s is not an isolated case. Neha (name changed), who was also a techie, is now trying to crack the civil services examination. She has saved enough money from her old job to prepare for the exam. She also works part time for two leading TV channels as an anchor. “I was anyway planning to quit for my preparatory classes,” she said.

“When they asked me to leave, it came as a boon to me.” Some techies see the whole episode as the only positive outcome of the financial downturn. “The one good thing the recession has done to us is that we now have the opportunity/ willingness to look beyond an IT job,” said Renjith, another techie who is planning to do something on his own after he was sent on a forced sabbatical last month.

With IT jobs virtual, loans are stark reality

Source: EconomicTimes
Five years ago, when 18-year-old Mithilesh proudly announced that software programming was going to be his life’s calling, the only name his father, Ramesh Kumar Sinha, could think of was Bill Gates.

“I had heard he was the richest man in the world. So I thought may be Mithilesh will someday get to work at Microsoft,” says the 53-year-old, who works in his small farm in Madhubhani in north Bihar, a district where every second person is illiterate.

Mithilesh had his own reasons to be a code-jock. In the neighbourhood, he already knew one person who “studied computers” and went on to work in the US. And his was the first house in the village to have that quintessential middle-class accouterment—a flat-screen television.

The lad knew the software industry was the gateway to the middle class and Bangalore the gateway to the software industry. So he zeroed in on an engineering college in India’s tech capital, secured an education loan and enrolled for a BTech course in 2004. He was hoping to join the privileged 2.5 million or so for whom software was a calling and who were the cream of India’s new middle class.

“A job with an IT company was always considered a holy cow and if you did not have this job profile, then you were lower down in the caste ladder,” says Manish Sabharwal, who heads staffing firm TeamLease.

But three years and a downturn later, Mithilesh today faces the prospect of being added to the ranks of the 70,000-odd engineering students unlikely to secure a job this year.

The global economic slowdown and the recession in the software industry’s main market in the US had forced top IT employers such as Infosys, TCS and Wipro to more or less freeze new hiring. Students with offer letters were asked to wait.

“If I had known there would be no demand for fresh engineering graduates by the time I pass my course, I would have taken up chartered accountancy,” says Mithilesh, who now looks to his farmer father to repay the Rs 3.5-lakh loan. Thoughts of flat-screen televisions are furthest from his mind.

With tech companies sneezing, businesses banking on the new entrants to the middle class such as Mithilesh to drive consumption have caught a cold. The economic reforms of the early 1990s and the IT boom of the last decade have been a significant force in the expansion of India’s middle class, estimated to have grown to 300 million people today from 150 million in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The nouveau middle class created by the software industry drove up demand and created jobs in sectors such as autos, consumer goods, retail, housing and entertainment. They triggered property booms in cities such as Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore. Today, commercial and residential rentals in the IT hubs of Chennai and Bangalore have come down by nearly a third.

Those with a severe cold are India’s engineering colleges, which are seeing a steep drop in the demand for courses in information technology. According to S Mohammed Tajudeen, who handles placements at Crescent Engineering College in Chennai, there are 30% fewer applicants for courses in IT while the numbers of those opting for computer science has dropped by a tenth.

The capitation fee that private colleges used to charge for IT-related streams has dropped by over 50% this year, says another placement officer on condition of anonymity.

Mohandas Pai, HR director at Infosys, observes that what the public sector was in the 1970s and the 1980s in terms of job generation, the IT sector became starting late 1990s. Despite the troubles it is facing now, he is confident that employment in the tech industry will be the career of choice for millions of young Indians.

Shiv Visvanathan, a social scientist and senior fellow at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, says IT is different from others because of its boom and bust cycles. “There are ups and downs that people need to realise,” he says.

While some of Mithilesh’s seniors from college have already taken up low-paying jobs at call centres to pay back their loans, he says he will wait. He hopes his name will figure among the 100,000 professionals that software industry group, Nasscom, says will be added by tech firms by March 2010. India’s software firms hired about a quarter of a million professionals in the year to March 2009.

Abhay Tilak, 21, who graduated in 2008 from an engineering college in Chennai, had a letter offering him a job at software company MindTree in May last year. He is still waiting for the job. To keep the home fires burning he now works at a call center for Rs 6,000 per month.

“The MindTree job will pay better, but more importantly, I can do software coding instead of mindlessly attending calls. This job helps me support my family, but this is not what I did my engineering for,” he says. Mithilesh’s father, however, will not allow him to spend his nights answering calls from across the globe.

Leading IT companies told ET that it may take at least three years more for the industry to get back to the days of mass hiring, especially with TCS, Infosys and Wipro putting in place new delivery models which will allow them to serve more customers with fewer resources.

TeamLease’s Sabharwal says the IT industry is like a pyramid in terms of growth opportunities. “It is either up or out. The path upwards is very narrow and while the industry will continue to mass recruit for the base level, those at the middle level will find it difficult to grow,” he says.

While people like Mithilesh and Abhay cope with the new reality, they face the danger of becoming obsolete in terms of skills when the economy finally recovers. “By the time I get a job, there will be a huge backlog of freshers and people with 3-5 years of experience willing to work for lower pay,” says Mithilesh.

While Mithilesh lets the grass grow under his feet, he is in danger of losing out to people like Abhay, who have at least kept working. “Rather than waiting for your dream job, it is better to take up what opportunity you have,” advises Pratik Kumar, head of HR at Wipro.

Infosys’ Pai is more blunt: “A graduate who passed out this year has higher chances of being employed, especially if the 2008 graduate did not use the one year to keep himself skillfully occupied.”

Jet looks to cut 2,000 jobs in phases; shows door to 50

As part of its efforts to tide over the downturn in the airline industry, Jet Airways is going for a major staff downsizing.

Currently, Jet's employee strength stands at 12,000. According to sources in the airline, the Naresh Goyal-owned Jet is looking to bring it below 10,000 in a phased manner. Jet Airways currently has an aircraft to employee ratio of 1:145 which it wants to scale down quite sharply.

However, the company denied any drastic reduction in staff strength and said it was "rightsizing the personnel requirements in sales organisation."

Sources said that the company has already started giving pink slips, with about 50 employees being laid off over the past one week. In April, Jet also reduced salaries by 10-25% across employee categories.

In an email reply to ET NOW’s queries, Jet Airways said: "As part of its ongoing measures to streamline costs to counter the current economic downturn, Jet Airways had initiated measures for the rightsizing of the personnel requirements in its sales organisation." Most of them, according to the airline, are being offered alternative positions.

The airline claimed that such reorganisation became necessary since greater proportion of ticket bookings are being generated through the web, travel portals and travel intermediaries, resulting in a reduced requirement for support staff.

This is not the first attempt by the airline at reducing its staff. In October last year, the private airline terminated jobs of around 1,000 employees, largely cabin crew. But, Mr Goyal was forced to take back all the sacked employees due to huge political pressure.

However, this time around, the company is treading cautiously by not going for huge reduction at one go. Instead, it is rationalising manpower across departments in a phased manner. Jet reported a Rs 225-crore loss in the first quarter of the current financial year, even as the domestic airline industry mounted up a loss of over Rs 10,000 crore in the past one year.

The airline is restructuring its operations in such a way that it could operate with minimum staff, the company said. The airline has centralised operations in Mumbai. Automated systems for passenger services such as check-in facility are being put in place. The airline has cut capacity by over 30% in the past six months and this has further made many flying staff redundant, it added.

Employees lay-offs least likely tool for cost cutting in India: Survey

Retrenchment of employees is the least likely cost-cutting tool for Indian companies, compared to their global peers, and they would be the first across the world to recommence regular salary revisions, a new survey said today.

According to the joint survey by global consultancy service provider Mercer and industry body CII, Indian companies were also increasingly using "innovative" incentive tools as a substitute for salary hikes to retain the talent, but were also cutting on employee mobility and travel to cut HR costs.

"Indian companies (are) least likely to consider retrenchment as a means to cut costs compared with (its) global counterparts," the survey said.

The survey explored the implications of the current global economic situation on talent management, compensation, benefits as well as on employee concerns and the HR functions.

It further said that war for skilled talent in India is set to make a comeback towards end of 2009.

In such unprecedented times Indian companies have been resilient, Mercer Consulting India Managing Director Ravichandar R Padma said adding that most Indian companies have managed to turn the downturn into an opportunity.

Most of the companies worldwide are resorting to job cuts as part of their efforts to bring down cost.

Recession-hit Bangalore techies settle for low-paying jobs

Till a few months ago, IT professional TV George was earning Rs70,000 per month, plus perks. But after losing his high-paying job, and being unemployed for three months, George, 31, has started giving tuitions in mathematics and physics to aspiring engineering students in his neighbourhood.

"Now, I am earning Rs15,000 per month. It's been hard. I got married only a few months before losing my job. So, when I lost my job, I was in a difficult position. Thankfully, I had some savings. With the savings, I am paying my rent and for a few other necessities," George, who was employed with a top US IT company, said.

"After losing my job, I tried my best to get a new job. But I remained unlucky. So to help run my home, I decided to give coaching classes to aspiring engineering students."

George is not alone. Recession has hit the IT sector in Bangalore, with scores of techies losing their jobs. Some have been forced to take up low-paying jobs as they wait to bounce back when the recession ends.

Dipankar Dutta, 27, working with an Indian IT company as software engineer, lost his job almost eight months ago.

Today he has a job, but as a content writer in a tech firm.

"Thankfully, writing has been my forte. So, I landed this job of a content writer. Otherwise I would have been in a soup. Since I cannot afford to stay in Bangalore without a job, I compromised and settled for the new job with a much lower pay package," said Dutta.

Scores of IT and ITES professionals in Bangalore have lost their jobs in recent times, an effect of the global economic meltdown. But there is no precise count of the numbers.

According to the latest employment and business outlook report by Bangalore-based staffing firm Teamlease, at 23%, the attrition rate in this city is higher than in any other city in India.

The report was based on interviews with HR heads, CEOs and senior executives of 495 companies in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Pune.

"The city accounted for the highest attrition rate. IT accounts for over 80% of the city's total labour pool. The attrition rate was 23% in the last quarter, against the previous quarter's 16%. Much of the attrition could be involuntary attrition (or layoffs)," Teamlease general manager Surabhi Mathur-Gandhi said.

India's Silicon Valley has seen thousands of people getting pink slips in recent months. And many more are under the threat of losing their jobs.

"It's painful to lose your job, in today's expensive world. Those who have lost their jobs are desperate now, thus they are settling for low paying jobs," Karthik Shekhar, general secretary of UNITES-Professionals, an unrecognised union of IT/Call Centre/BPO employees, said.

"Every day we meet young men and women who have lost their IT jobs recently. All they want is a job. But getting a job in the IT sector is very difficult. So, they have no option but to settle for jobs outside their fields and that too with low paying packages," Shekhar added.

"It's encouraging that today's youths are ready to move ahead in their lives. Instead of waiting for the economy to revive, IT professionals have started exploring other fields and this is a positive sign," said BN Gangadhar, professor of psychiatry at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (Nimhans), Bangalore.

Mohammed Khan, a trained software engineer, told IANS: "Initially it was difficult, but I am happy with my choice. After losing my job with an IT firm, now I am working as a sales executive. I am hoping the economy will recover soon and all the techies who have lost their jobs will get new jobs in their field."
Source: TheTimesofIndia

Nearly 5000 employees quit TCS

At a time when job losses are grabbing headlines, almost 5,000 employees of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) have in fact left the company on their own. Last Friday during its quarterly results, the company announced that its annual attrition rate was at 11.5 percent.

The headcount of India's largest software exporter shrank despite a gross addition of staff. According to Hindustan Times, in the latest quarter TCS added a total of 2,828 employees with the total headcount of 1,43,761 at the start of the quarter. If the new hires are taken into consideration, the total employees strength should have reached 1,46,589 by the end of June. However, the firm's headcount was at 1,41,642 as of June 30, 2009, showing a net reduction of 4,947 employees.

A company spokesperson confirmed the staff decline but added that TCS's attrition levels were in line with the industry average. "Our attrition level has remained similar to what it was in the previous quarter. However, since we have controlled gross additions, the overall headcount has come down," said a TCS spokesperson.

The company is hiring fresh graduates as per need, but will honor the 24,885 campus offers it had made last financial year and those students would come on board only from the second quarter (July-September). "About 1,000 have joined this year and the rest would join in a phased manner throughout the year. We are also hiring overseas. For our newly opened Cincinnati campus, we are looking at hiring 250 people this year. For that we have made offers to 111 people from top universities, of which 99 have accepted and 38 already joined," the spokesperson said. Like its competitor Infosys, TCS decided to honor old commitments on campus recruitments while slowing down the hiring of new graduates. But lateral hiring of experienced staff is continuing, though on a low key.

It needs to be seen if these 5,000 employees have in fact quit voluntarily or were they forced to leave by the company.

How Indian IT is fighting recession

The Indian IT industry managed to limit the impact of global recession last fiscal and maintain the growth momentum, albeit lower than that in the boom times, says tech publisher Dataquest.

"Export firms did better in recession-hit developed markets than those whose business is limited to the Indian market," Dataquest editor Prasanto K Roy said.

Though the business of top 20 firms led by Indian IT bellwethers TCS, Infosys and Wipro, and multinationals such as HP and IBM, grew by an average 19 per cent, seven of these posted single-digit revenue growth.

"Overall, the top 20 Indian software and hardware firms reported a combined revenue of Rs 183,621 crore (Rs 1.84 trillion/$39.52 billion) in 2009, compared to Rs 149,250 crore (Rs.1.49 trillion/$32.12 billion) in 2008," Roy said, citing findings of a survey.

Among the seven, four are multinational subsidiaries -- Microsoft India, which grew a mere one per cent year-on-year to Rs 32.98 billion (Rs 3,298 crore); HP India up two per cent to Rs 157.63 billion (Rs15,763 crore), Oracle three per cent to Rs 59.62 billion (Rs 5,962 crore) and Cisco by four per cent to Rs 60.84 billion (Rs 6,084 crore).

"One of the reasons for export-driven firms maintaining the growth is because of increasing IT outsourcing in a downturn to keep costs flexible. In the domestic market too, global firms such as IBM and Wipro fared very well," Roy averred.

Among the top 20 firms, eight firms grew fastest despite slowdown and negative sentiment in the market.

These include Mphasis, with revenues increasing 69 per cent to Rs 31.73 billion (Rs 3,173 crore); HCL Infosystems, up 60 per cent to Rs 80.89 billion (Rs 8,089 crore) and Cognizant Technologies, up 49 per cent to Rs 94.10 billion (Rs 9,410 crore).

The IT bellwethers also posted healthy growth rates. TCS was up 22 per cent to Rs 25,895 crore; Infosys, up 31 per cent to Rs 20,392 crore, and Wipro up 41 per cent to Rs 23,882 crore.

Multinationals such as SAP India grew 33 per cent to Rs 4,320 crore, Dell India by 32 per cent to Rs 4,266 crore, IBM India by 19 per cent to Rs 12,048 crore and Accenture by 16 per cent to Rs 4,400 crore.

With a decline of 18 per cent in its growth, hardware firm Lenovo failed to make it to the top 20 club. Korean major Samsung also saw growth falling 40 per cent to Rs 1,200 crore from Rs 2,014 crore.

Export revenues do not include that of business process outsourcing (BPO) services.

Scam-tainted Satyam Computer Services has been left out of the top 20, as its financial performance came under cloud following the Rs 78-billion (Rs 7,800-crore) accounting fraud by founder-chairman B Ramalinga Raju.

The Dataquest survey findings are lower than the projections made by the IT industry's representative body -- National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) -- for 2009-10.

With the industry's annual growth rate dipping to 16-17 per cent from about 30 per cent in 2004-2008, the aggregate revenues was estimated to be $60 billion, including export revenue of $47 billion.

In view of the prevailing uncertainty, Nasscom has taken a two-year view to factor in the volatile environment and estimated that the IT industry would grow at 15 per cent to achieve export revenue of $60-62 billion by 2010-11.
Source: IndiaTimes.com

Scope for cost cutting still exists, says TCS

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest IT firm, feels there is still scope for cost management, said CFO S Mahalingam. “We had initiated several mechanisms in the past few quarters and they have started to show results. We have put in a new organisational structure a year earlier. I would not like to depend just on cuts, but have a cost structure that will help in delivering the margins we have seen this quarter,” Mahalingam added.

TCS’ Q1 results for 2009-10 beat market expectations. Net profit rose 15 per cent and revenues grew half-a-per cent sequentially. The results were also impacted by a lower forex loss.

For Mahalingam, sustaining this growth over the next few quarters is a concern. “One of the biggest positives this quarter was no decline in revenue. There are some things that bother me. One, we need to completely focus on margins. Wewill need to diversify enough so that there is growth. Two, currency (value) remains an issue and, three; we are still in the cost growing area. How do we make sure that the cuts are sustained will be important,” he added.

Satyam lays off staff, starts hiring afresh

The market may have run dry of jobs, but guess who is still hiring? Well, it’s Mahindra Satyam. Believe it or not, but the scam-hit IT firm has on offer over two dozen jobs in various departments of the company, with the most number of vacancies in its SAP unit. Interestingly, these openings have been created not more than a month after the management of the company moved over 7,000 Satyamites to a Virtual Pool Program (VPP), citing “excess work force” as the reason.

The openings are for positions ranging from storage and WebSphere administrators to SAP and Oracle consultants and managers. Applications from junior as well as middle level employees with work experience ranging from two to eight years have been invited. Most positions are for the firm’s Pune office.

Senior sources say that the SAP unit of Satyam is indeed in “dire need for staff” as it lost many of its good hands and even senior associates over the last few months. Sources say that Mahindra Satyam is frantically looking out for SAP expertise primarily because the company wants to bag certain projects that require this skill.

“The main reason why Tech-Ma took over Satyam was because the latter’s SAP unit was very strong. TechMa wanted to use this expertise to win over the several million dollar-worth British Telecom’s SAP project, that it has been eying for sometime now,” the source said adding, “Though several from this unit of Satyam, including some top leaders, have already quit there are still some experts who, with the help of a larger team, can do wonders.”

Though this recruitment drive might have come as good news for those in desperate need for an opening, it has left Satyamites, currently on VPP, fuming.
Source: EconomicTimes

Corporate India optimistic, only 6 per cent firms cut pay

Amid the economic down-turn impacting companies worldwide, India Inc rema-ins cautiously optimistic with just 16 per cent firms freezing salaries and as low as 6 per cent reducing pays for 2009-10, a survey by HR consultancy Hewitt Associates says.

According to a mid-year survey on Performance & Reward Trends by Hewitt Associates, companies acr-oss industries are strongly differentiating rewards on the basis of performance but majority of them are not considering any layoffs or severe salary cuts in the present financial year.

“With only five per cent of the organisations consi-dering layoffs, minimal salary reduction at 6 per cent and salary freeze at 16 per cent, India Inc looks cautiously optimistic,” He-witt’s Performance and Rewards Consulting pract-ice leader in India Sandeep Chaudhary said.

The survey revealed that 16 per cent of companies surveyed have a salary freeze and they were mainly organisations in the finan-cial services, IT and ITeS sector.

Moreover, only 6 per cent of the firms have cut salaries and just 5 per cent were considering layoffs for FY10.
“During these unprece-dented times when firms across the world conside-red options such as mass layoffs and salary cuts, India Inc also considered the same measures, but with maturity,” Chaudhary added.
“It reflects the response of a growth economy man-aging a short to medium term slowdown, while keeping an eye on long term growth,” he added.

Interestingly, about 30 per cent of the organisa-tions have deferred their salary revision cycle. They have been deferred from April to July or October, the survey stated.

The survey said the firms were laying stringent focus on performance and productivity with as much as 69.2 per cent employees getting a rating of ‘met expectations’ or ‘below’.

“There is a stricter identification of top and bottom performers. In almost every sector, emplo-yees who were rated as ‘far exceeds expectations’, ha-ve received a salary incre-ase almost two times higher than that provided to employees who only ‘met expectations’,” the survey added.

The general trend which has emerged is that several firms are considering a salary increase only for their top performers for the year 2009-2010.

The survey was conduct-ed across 137 firms (foreign-owned, locally-owned, and joint-venture private sector) and 9 primary industries during the period of May-June 2009.

“The survey was carried out at this time as most companies set their apprai-sal and salary related polic-ies at the start of the financial year in April,” Chaudhary added.

The survey pointed out that 61.9 per cent of respondents have reported that their salary increase budget is different from the previous forecast and all employee levels have been impacted by the reduction in salary increase budgets.

BT to take back 2,000 Desi jobs to UK; more cuts likely

IT majors Infosys and HCL could bear the brunt of BT’s decision to take back 2,000 call centre services jobs from India to its home base in the UK this year.

BT’s Chief Executive, Mr Ian Livingston, had revealed the plan on Wednesday in response to a question asked by a shareholder at the group’s annual general meeting.

When contacted a BT spokesperson told Business Line, “BT Retail can confirm it is reducing its reliance on third party call centre staff in India. By next year, approximately 4,000 less people will be contracted in India than was the case in early 2008.

“Much of this reduction is due to improved customer service, which means that fewer support staff are required. “Some work will however be moved back to the UK and given to full-time BT employees affected by cuts elsewhere in these challenging times.

“BT has a responsibility to find work for its permanent workforce and this is just one measure it is taking to protect its direct workforce,” he said.

No quality issues
BT said that the move to recall jobs was not because of quality issues. BT sources in India said that while 2,000 jobs have already been taken back last year another 2,000 call centre seats will be reduced this year.

Impact on Indian cos
They said that Infosys and HCL would be the ones losing out on the contracts.

Revenues from BT have more than halved for Infosys over the past six quarters as the telecom firm has reduced volumes and also due to the adverse impact of cross currency movements.

For the latest quarter, BT accounted for about 4.5 per cent of Infosys’ revenues against a high of 10.3 per cent in quarter-ended March 2008.

When contacted, a spokesperson for Tech Mahindra said: “We do not comment on specific customer engagement. We remain a strategic partner with BT across multiple service offerings.” Tech Mahindra currently enjoys committed business worth over $2 billion from BT.

The announcement is unlikely to impact Tech Mahindra as of now since BT is a major shareholder in the city-based company, sources said. However, it may be noted that BT has been looking to sell its 31 per cent stake in Tech Mahindra for some time now.

Of late, there have been numerous examples of companies returning customer service functions to domestic locations.

The world’s largest airline, Delta Airlines announced in April 2009 that it would close its contact centre in India and return these functions to locations back home in the US. Similar centres in South Africa and Jamaica were not affected by this move, according to a report from AT Kearney.

In a similar move, Dell is now offering a premium technical support subscription that guarantees American customers they can talk to customer service representatives in the US as opposed to India.

Siemens IT arm laid off 500 techies; most of them from B'lore centre

Siemens Information Systems, a business unit of Siemens India, part of German technology giant Siemens is understood to have laid off around 500 people over the last three days. The company has 5,500 employees across eight cities in India and provides software solutions and services to aviation, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing and telecom companies.

Sources said most of the affected employees were located in the company’s development centre in the Electronics city area of Bangalore. “While they laid off 180 people on Friday, during the last two days they have fired about 300 people,” sources told.

“Some of the affected are employees who joined the company less than one year ago and were not given confirmation. The laid off employees are also not being allowed to serve the notice period,” sources added.

A Siemens India spokesperson said the number of employees released (laid-off) was a little over 100 and were limited to one particular business unit of Siemens Information Systems.

“The global economic slowdown and unfavorable market conditions has affected the software business in India. As a result, the System Development and Engineering (SDE) business unit of Siemens Information Systems ... has been under cost pressure. This has necessitated that SDE realign and optimise its processes, as well as resources for attaining business sustainability,” a company statement said. “The company launched a series of initiatives to reduce its cost base, which included the release of a little over 100 employees from the SDE business unit,” the statement added.

The company added it was taking steps to help employees seek alternative job opportunities. Help desks had been set up for the purpose.

“In terms of financial support, the company is compensating the affected employees at terms that are higher than the contractual terms,” a spokesperson said.

Infosys employee numbers down by 945

IT major Infosys Technlogies today said the number of its employees declined by 945 in the first quarter of this fiscal.

The company had hired close to 3,538 employees in the June quarter, but after taking into account attrition and other factors its total strength has actually lowered.

"During the quarter, Infosys and its subsidiaries added 3,538 employees (gross). The net decline during the quarter was 945," the company statement said.

As on June 30, 2009, Infosys and its subsidiaries have a total of 1,03,905 employees on board, it added.

"We believe that in the short term the global economic environment will continue to be challenging. We are working closely with our clients to help them navigate the downturn. We continue to invest in the future to take advantage of the growth opportunities in the medium to long term," Infosys CEO and Managing Director S Gopalakrishnan said.

In the fourth quarter last year, the company had seen net additions of 1,772 employees, while in the first quarter of previous fiscal there were net additions of 94,379 employees.

The company witnessed an attrition of 11.1 per cent in the first quarter of this fiscal against 13.6 per cent in the corresponding period in previous fiscal.

Besides, in the entire financial year ended March 31, 2009, the company had hired 28,231 employees, but the net additions for the year were just 13,663.

Mahindra Satyam’s benched staff shrinks by 1,100

Mahindra Satyam has recalled 1,100 employees from its virtual pool. Of the total number of recalled staff, 500 associates have moved to some projects of Tech Mahindra, the owner of Mahindra Satyam.

Close to 10,000 associates based in India, who were not engaged in any projects for more than three months, had been put in the virtual pool.

The move is a sign that business for the embattled software exporter is improving. Hari T, the newly-appoi-nted chief people officer at Mahindra Satyam, said, “We have recalled more people. Around 627 assoc-iates have been recalled. Additionally, 500 people have been moved to few projects in Tech Mahindra.”

These associates would be given ‘basic’ pay in addition to provident fund and medical benefits. Hari refused to comm-ent on the exact size of the present virtual pool. “They are being called back for projects across techno-logies,” he said.

As per recent disclosures made by Mahindra Satyam, the company had lost around 23 customers since the scam broke.
The com-pany has also grabbed new orders worth $380 million, most of which are coming from existing clients.

“Satyam had a total of $164 million in outstan-ding forward contracts,” said an Indiabulls Research report on Tech Mahindra. The report further added that the integration of Satyam would be a test for the management as Satya-m has a large pool of disen-gaged employees.
Source:FinancialChronicle

Six lakh jobs losses in India in four months: Economic Survey

More than 6,00,000 Indians, many employed in the gems and jewellery sector, lost jobs in just four months from October 2008 as the impact of the global economic crisis hit the country's shores.

About 5,00,000 people lost their jobs in the October- December 2008 period, while over 1,00,000 were shed in January this year, the Economic Survey said.

In September, the crisis turned severe following the bankruptcy of American financial services major Lehman Brothers. Since then, millions of jobs have been shed worldwide, as companies resorted to massive layoffs as part of their cost cutting measures.

Attributing to a survey conducted by the Ministry of Labour and Employment, the report said that during the three months from October to December 2008, there was a decline in employment of about half a million workers.

Among the sectors, the most hit by the financial turmoil are gems and jewellery, transport and automobiles.

"The most affected sectors were gems and jewellery, transport and automobiles where employment has declined by 8.58 per cent, 4.03 per cent and 2.42 per cent, respectively during the period (October to December 2008)," it said.

Another "thin sample survey" by the Ministry of Labour and Employment indicated that in January

Another sample survey carried out by the Department of Commerce for 402 exporting units showed that 1,09,000 jobs were shed during August 2008 to mid-January 2009 period.

"Two other surveys (by Department of Commerce) for the period August 2008 to February 9, 2009 and August 2008 to February 28, 2009 revealed job losses (direct and indirect) of 1,17,602 and 1,19,159 persons, respectively," the Economic Survey said.

However, there is a reason to be optimistic since yet another survey conducted by the Labour Bureau for the January-March period showed improvement in the employment scenario in selected sectors.

The Labour Bureau survey, which covered 3,192 units, indicated improvement in the selected sectors with employment rising by a "quarter million".

"Sectors registering increased employment were gems and jewellery (3.08 per cent), textiles (0.96 per cent), IT-BPO (0.82 per cent), handloom-powerloom (0.56 per cent) and automobile (0.10 per cent)," the Survey said quoting the Labour Bureau.

In the Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007-12), about 58 million employment opportunities are projected to be created and the unemployment rate is anticipated to fall below five per cent.

Pinkslips haunting techies

Source: IndiaTimes.com
IT professionals in are battling the global downturn with the help of doctors. Living under constant fear of losing their jobs or trauma of seeing their colleagues getting the pink slip, techies are increasingly seeking medical help to survive what experts call "layoff survivor syndrome".

The intensity of the syndrome could become severe when a team member working on a project is benched or sent out, a leading psychiatrist said.

"It's a mental situation where IT professionals who of late have seen their colleagues, who are often friends too, being laid off," BN Gangadhar, professor of psychiatry at the premier National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS) here, told media.

"First, it is the anxiety that the axe may fall upon them the next time and, secondly, a sense of remorse, with a tinge of guilt that they have survived, whereas their colleagues sitting next to them have lost jobs," Gangadhar said.

Two million people were employed in the Indian IT and BPO industry in 2007-08, according to the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom). The BPO sector employed more than 700,000 people.

"These are bad times. Recently two of my colleagues, who are also close friends, were fired. I am feeling terrible after the episode," said Sundar Gopal working with a reputed Indian IT company.

UNITES-Professionals (Union of Information Technology-Enabled Services-Professionals), says there is no clear estimate of the job loss in these sectors in the wake of the global economic meltdown.

Though UNITES claims that such unions have been formed in several countries, they are not recognised as a trade union either by the governments or employers.

"Every other employed IT professional is thinking that it's their turn next," rues Karthik Shekhar, general secretary of UNITES-Bangalore.

UNITES-Bangalore says it has more than 50,000 members. "Those who are still employed are working under great mental stress, which is taking a toll on their work and professional growth also," Shekhar asserted.

UNITES-Bangalore contends that the employers are not helping their staff to deal with the mental trauma of being laid off.

"The companies are not giving any kind of counselling before handing over pink slips to their employees. This leaves the employees distraught. The companies should provide some kind of counselling in not only giving mental solace to their employees but also some amount of guidance in helping them find an alternative means of livelihood," said Shekhar.

Several Bangalore hospitals say they are seeing increased number of IT professionals seeking help. "We're getting two types of IT professionals seeking our help. First are those who have already lost their jobs and second are those who're fighting the fear that they might lose their jobs soon," said M Srihari, a psychiatrist with the state government-run Bangalore Medical College.

"After counselling and medical aid, many have improved, but some are too shocked to believe that they have lost their jobs or their colleagues have lost their jobs," Srihari added.

He has a suggestion, particularly for youngsters. "Losing a job is not the end of life. Life has many things in store and they could easily try various options to rise again," added Srihari.

From the sprawling campuses of IT majors to the small backroom offices in the city the "psychological pressure" under which the staff goes about the daily work is evident when one talks to them.

Ramaya P, employed at a multinational company, said every day she works under the fear of being fired the next moment.

"Insecurity is palpable everywhere. I have heard of cases of so many people getting pink slips in recent times. My stress level has increased," said Ramya, who added she has not yet thought of going to a counsellor. Asked how she is tackling the situation, Ramya said: "I only hope the situation improves soon."