The Weekly Dispatch

Tech Mahindra to hire 6,000 freshers in FY25

Tech Mahindra is set to hire 1,500 freshers every quarter as it sees a turnaround in business from the 1st quarter of fiscal year 2024-25 starting April. Total headcount for Tech Mahindra declined by 795 from the previous quarter to 145,455, falling by 6,945 from 152,400 employees a year ago. “We are steadily hiring fresh graduates with 1500 every quarter, and that continues,” said Mohit Joshi, MD & CEO, Tech Mahindra. Headcount reduction reflects the business volume that we are seeing, Joshi said, adding that he sees improvement going forward.

Happiest Minds to acquire PureSoftware Technologies for ?779 crore

Happiest Minds Technologies will acquire PureSoftware Technologies for $94.5 million (?779 crore), the company said. The transaction is expected to be completed by May 2024. Happiest Minds expects the acquisition to help strengthen its domain capabilities in BFSI, as well as healthcare and life sciences verticals. PureSoftware, with 1,200 employees, will augment the capabilities and services offerings to Happiest Minds' Product & Digital Engineering Services Business Unit.

Azim Premji, Rishad reappointed to Wipro board for 5 years

The board of directors of Wipro Limited has reappointed Azim H Premji as non-executive, non-independent Director and his son Rishad A Premji as Executive Chairman for a period of 5 years with effect from July 31, 2024, subject to the approval of stakeholders. The Premji family members together own 4.43% shares in Wipro, including Premji’s wife Yasmeen (0.05%). The promoter group together holds about 72.9% of the company.

IBM to buy HashiCorp in $6.4 billion deal to expand in cloud

IBM will buy HashiCorp in a deal valued at $6.4 billion, the company said, expanding its cloud-based software products to tap into an AI-powered boom in demand. The software has been a bright spot for IBM as its consulting business grapples with more cautious spending by enterprises navigating higher interest rates. California-based HashiCorp allows customers to establish and manage their infrastructures on the cloud.

Apple announces event on May 7 amid reports of launch of new iPads

Apple will reveal new iPad Pro and iPad Air models at an event on May 7 in Cupertino. The launch signifies Apple's first lineup overhaul since 2018, aiming to combat declining sales with innovative products. Bloomberg News reported in March that Apple's overseas suppliers had ramped up production of the new iPads, and a launch was planned for early May. Apple is also scheduled to hold its Worldwide Developers Conference from June 10 to June 14.

CtrlS plans 13MW data center in Hyderabad, India

Indian data center operator CtrlS is building a new data center in Hyderabad. CtrlS has said it will open its 3rd data centre in the city in the next 2-3 months. The facility, which will come up in the financial district in Gachibowli, will have a built-up area of about 1.34 lakh sq ft and a 13 MW IT load capacity. The 5-storeyed facility is AI-ready and earthquake resistant. CtrlS Datacenters also operates facilities in Mumbai, Bangalore, Noida, and Kolkata, with Edge locations in Lucknow and Patna.

IT sector expects fresher hiring surge in FY25 with deal growth, attrition decline

The IT sector in India, after a complete fiscal of low-to-no freshers and entry-level hiring, will see fresher hiring pick up in FY25. As the deal pipeline swells, attrition comes down, and utilisation levels peak amid a tough demand environment, fresher hiring will also be an effective cost-play for IT firms. The IT sector collective shows a 70,000 net addition of entry-level talent in the last fiscal. Looking at the previous low years of fresher intake by the IT sector, FY24 ended as the lowest intake year over a two-decade period.

Microsoft results top Wall Street targets, driven by AI investment

Microsoft beat Wall Street estimates for 3rd-quarter revenue and profit, driven by gains from adopting AI across its cloud services, and the company's shares jumped more than 4% in extended trade. Executives forecast ranges for current quarter cloud revenue that was mostly above Wall Street targets. Microsoft revenue rose 17% to $61.9 billion in the quarter that ended in March, exceeding the consensus estimate of $60.80 billion. Earnings per share of $2.94 topped Wall Street's target of $2.82.

CriticalRiver to offer ESOPS for all its employees to build loyalty, cut attrition

In a bid to promote loyalty and reduce attrition, CriticalRiver has floated a 2-way ESOP policy to give shares to all of its employees. The company, which has over 1,000 employees in 9 global locations, has decided to give 100 shares to each employee every year. It will grant 100 ESOPs to each employee annually based on the years of service. Furthermore, each employee will get an additional 100 ESOPs each year. Parallelly, the company would give ESOPs based on the performance of the employees.

Tech Mahindra Q4 net profit down 41% to ?661 crore; revenue tanks 6.2%

Tech Mahindra reported a decline in net profit of 40.9% YoY to ?661 crore, primarily driven by a slowdown in its telecom, communications, media and entertainment business, which is its largest vertical with 36.5% market share.??The profit stood at ?1,118 crore in last year's March quarter. Sequentially, profit grew 29.6% from ?510 crore in the December quarter because of a one-off gain. The firm's consolidated revenue from operations fell 6.2% YoY to ?12,871.30 crore from ?13,718 crore in the March quarter of FY23.

Mphasis Q4 profit falls 2.9%, revenue up 1.5% YoY

Mphasis has reported a 2.9% dip in net profit at ?393.22 crores against ?405.31 crores in the year-ago quarter. The fall in profit was largely driven by a 10% YoY degrowth in its BFS segment, which constitutes nearly half of its revenues. Mphasis witnessed a 10.8% YoY fall in its top 1-10 client metrics due to BFS-related drops in the early part of the year, it said. On a sequential basis, profit increased by 5.2% from???373.6 crore in the previous quarter ending December 2023.

Genpact launches AI innovation centre in Gurugram

Genpact launched an AI Innovation Centre in Gurugram. The centre is a ‘launchpad for innovation’ that will enable talent to learn, experiment, and build holistic, AI-focused, growth-oriented solutions for Genpact’s global clients, the company said in a statement. Further, it will help democratise access to AI and offer Genpact experts and clients a dedicated space to explore ways to reinvent their businesses with new ideas, capabilities, and solutions. India is a strategic source of talent for the company, he said.

Network-as-a-service provider CloudExtel raises ?200 crore debt

Network-as-a-service (NaaS) provider CloudExtel announced it has secured its first external debt funding of ?200 crore, that will go into expanding its network of small cells and fiber optics. The company has also received an A- credit rating from CARE Ratings. The debt funding comes after CloudExtel secured equity investments from Macquarie Capital and Advencap in FY24. The company said the capital infusion is a testament to the scalability and viability of NaaS, its financial stability, governance and long-term stability.

TCS setting up four large BSNL data centres in ?15,000 crore 4G deal

TCS is setting up large data centres in the four regions of the country as part of its ?15,000-crore deal with state-owned telco Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, COO N Ganapathy Subramaniam said. The Tata Group’s IT services arm, along with the government’s Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT), will make 38 deployments, in total, of varying capacities in BSNL premises across all telecom circles of the telco as part of its 4G network deployment, making it the first indigenous network solutions provider.

UST Strengthens Presence in the Australian Market with Strategic Acquisition of Leading Consulting Firm Strativity Group

UST, a leading digital transformation solutions company, announced that it has acquired Strativity Group, a boutique strategy consultancy specialising in customer-centric transformations. Strativity is renowned for delivering customer experience strategy, design, innovation, change management, and operating models through adopting an insight-led approach that creates competitive advantage and tangible value creation.

Indians can now apply for a multiple-entry Schengen visa with longer validity

Indian nationals can now be issued long-term multi-entry Schengen visas valid for two years “after having obtained and lawfully used two visas within the previous three years”, the European Union has announced. The new visa ‘cascade’ regime will provide Indian nationals easier access to visas with multi-year validity for travellers “with an established travel history if the passport validity allows”. The decision was taken on April 18 when the European Commission adopted specific rules on issuing multiple entry visas to Indian nationals.

Duck Creek Technologies hires Sahana Shankar as Director of HR

Duck Creek Technologies has announced the appointment of Sahana Shankar as Director- Human Resources, effective April. Sahana has joined Duck Creek with 15 years of experience across the USA, Canada, the Middle East, APAC, Germany & México. In her most recent role, she worked with SGI in Canada. In her new job role, Sahana has been tasked with leading HR efforts in India to bolster growth.??She has confirmed her appointment on LinkedIn.

Cognizant and Microsoft announce global partnership to expand adoption of generative AI in the enterprise, and drive industry transformation

Cognizant and Microsoft announced an expanded partnership to make generative AI and Copilots available to millions of users, transform enterprise business operations, enhance employee experiences, and accelerate cross-industry innovation. The expanded partnership will leverage Microsoft Copilot and Cognizant’s advisory and digital transformation services to help employees and enterprise customers operationalize generative AI and realize strategic business transformation.