Over the past 12 months, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro and Infosys have shed over 100,000 employees between them, achieving greater size and scale instead through the adoption of automation and other newer technologies such as cloud computing.

The Indian Economic Times has reported that at least two of Indian’s top ten outsourcing firm CEOs have called metrics such as the gross addition of employees “irrelevant” and said that companies are starting to take highly strategic approaches towards managing attrition.

Higher attrition rates, in the region of 20 per cent, are now seen as the new norm, unlike in the early 2000s when firms like the service providers mentioned were recruiting tens of thousands of new engineers alone each year.

Business for the likes of TCS and Infosys is getting increasingly competitive, with the latter overtaking the former in North American revenue, volume and growth in the first quarter of this year. The continent is currently a key market for India’s IT suppliers.

In reaction to the lost business, TCS is going beyond automation to increase its competitive offering, with plans to train 100,000 new digital professionals by this time next year.

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