Infosys CEO Salil Parekh has confirmed the company will hire approximately 20,000 college graduates this year, maintaining its campus recruitment pace even as AI reshapes how IT work gets done. The announcement, made in an exclusive interview with CNBC-TV18, positions Infosys against a broader industry trend of headcount reduction and hiring caution.
Parekh ruled out layoffs, saying the company had not cut jobs in the past year and did not expect to do so. He framed AI as a driver of new work rather than a substitute for human labour, arguing that the technology would generate fresh service opportunities and require a larger, differently skilled workforce over time.
The 20,000 target is roughly in line with Infosys's campus intake from the previous year. The hiring push comes even as rivals including TCS, Cognizant and HCLTech have reduced headcount in response to automation and global cost pressures. AI already accounts for around 5.5 percent of Infosys revenue, Parekh said, and the company is expanding partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic while rolling out its internal Topaz Fabric platform to accelerate AI-led development.
For new recruits, the nature of entry-level work is shifting. Infosys is training freshers to work alongside AI tools including building systems and evaluating or improving AI-generated code rather than performing the kind of routine tasks that automation is absorbing. The company has already trained close to 275,000 employees in AI-related domains.
Parekh acknowledged that traditional services face some revenue compression as clients deploy AI internally, but said the growth from AI-led projects would outweigh that pressure over the medium term. The company's top 200 clients are together running approximately 4,600 AI initiatives, he noted, signalling sustained enterprise demand for implementation and integration talent.
