Early, contrarian AI trend has global IT firms hiring more in India to deliver growth, improve margins
Three of theworld’s largest IT services companies, Capgemini SE, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., and EPAM Systems Inc., have found a seemingly contrarian hack to both grow and maintain operating margins: increase India headcount.Analysts see this as the beginning of a new trend as artificial intelligence (AI)-based technologies increasingly become part of IT services workflows and give rise to demand for tech workers to monitor their deployment. India's talent pool seems to offer a competitive staffing solution for this need.This comes at a time when some among their biggest Indian peers are trimming workforce.In calendar year 2025, Capgemini, Cognizant and EPAM ended with 230,000, 256,900, and 12,200 employees in India, making between a fifth and three-fourths of their total employees, respectively.The three companies increased their India headcount compared with the year-ago period, both in absolute terms, and also as a percentage of total headcount.
Local hiring also drove overall headcount addition.Capgemini’s headcount addition in India made up 73% of the total increase in overall headcount. The company ended last year with 423,000 employees, an expansion of 81,900 from the previous year.To be sure, much of the increase was on account of acquisition of WNS, a New York-based business process management company.
On 17 October 2025, the Paris-listed IT services company acquired WNS (Holdings) Ltd for $3.3 billion. WNS had 66,000 employees of which about 44,000 were in India.On the other hand, Cognizant and Newton, Pennsylvania-headquarteredEPAM ended last calendar year with 351,600 and 62,850 employees, up by 14,800 and 1,650 people, respectively.
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