India's big IT firms hire far fewer fresh graduates as AI changes the skills employers want
TCS's FY2026 graduate intake was under half its level four years ago, and Infosys took on about 80 per cent fewer fresh graduates in FY2025 than three years…
Arpita Dayama, 22, is a final-year engineering student preparing for campus recruitment. She is aware that top marks earned at an elite institution such as IIT Bombay might not be sufficient any longer to set a candidate apart. Her goal is a career in analytics or product management, and she says employers now expect her to prove hands-on ability, ranging from data science projects to agentic artificial intelligence work.
Her experience reflects a wider change. CNA reported that as AI reshapes what employers look for, the largest IT companies in India are recruiting many fewer newly qualified graduates. Experts told CNA that the technology sector, which ranks among the largest creators of private-sector jobs nationally, is estimated to have employed 5.95 million people in 2026.
Hiring of graduates has dropped at big firms
According to its annual report, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) took on over 110,000 graduate engineers four years back. Company reports indicate that TCS brought in less than half that earlier number in financial year 2026, and that Infosys recruited roughly 80 per cent fewer fresh graduates in financial year 2025 compared with three years prior.
At the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in New Delhi on Oct 13, Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani said that junior engineers' traditional coding duties were increasingly being absorbed by AI. According to him, "new skills" would be required in areas such as managing the technology, business transformation and what clients need.
Sumit Sarawgi, India head at Oliver Wyman, said the consultancy's survey found roughly 45 per cent of Indian managers reporting that AI was absorbing work that used to help junior staff build experience. He said coding, testing and similar routine work was in decline, whereas demand was rising for AI, cybersecurity and process improvement. Multinational firms were still hiring fresh graduates, he said, though in smaller numbers, and moving them faster into roles needing both technical and business knowledge.
Mansee Singhal of Marsh Workforce & Rewards said the old model was to hire graduates in bulk and develop them over time. Firms are placing growing value on people able to grasp what a customer is struggling with and then trace a path back to a technology solution.
Experienced hires are preferred for some roles
For AI, cloud computing and cybersecurity positions, about 60 per cent of multinational firms' India centres favoured seasoned recruits rather than fresh graduates, a 2026 Zinnov survey found, with expertise and faster deployment given as reasons. Xpheno co-founder Kamal Karanth, whose firm is a staffing company, said that while training can make junior staff more at ease with AI, "true specialisation" for machine-learning engineers, AI architects and similar roles demands years of hands-on experience.
Sarawgi asked, "Where will the future middle managers come from?" and stressed that companies have to invest in fresh graduates if they want to develop the next generation of skilled workers. Singhal said: "In the short term, companies may hire experienced people, but over time they will need to develop that talent themselves."
Companies and colleges adapt
Generative AI is now part of the graduate training offered by both TCS and Infosys, the companies said. TCS stresses hands-on learning, while Infosys focuses on problem-solving and design thinking. In January 2024 TCS opened an AI Experience Zone, following its training of over 150,000 employees on generative AI fundamentals. Infosys said its AI Academy offers company-wide training.
In Sarawgi's view, part of the time that AI frees up should go toward mentoring and training junior staff. He cited an Oliver Wyman survey in which just 12 per cent of Indian respondents said their employers had such plans, and 48 per cent said they got no guidance.
As for universities, about 75,700 students benefited in FY2025 from Wipro's work with 646 colleges, which has involved teacher training and learning materials since FY2021. Jagat Sesh Challa of the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, said "Capabilities such as system-level thinking, professional judgement and responsible decision-making, which were traditionally developed after joining industry, must now be cultivated during university education itself." In his view, students ought to take on additional real-world projects, and assessment should examine how well they judge and improve solutions generated by AI and how they explain their reasoning.
Experts said the challenge is extending such opportunities beyond elite institutions. Better training for faculty at Tier 2 and Tier 3 colleges was another of Challa's demands, along with broader availability of mentorship and virtual internships. Karthik Raman of IIT Madras proposed that AI specialists join current departments to refresh courses, an approach he said would cost "far cheaper than retraining every faculty member from scratch".
Academic reform will be slow, Sarawgi warned, and until it arrives he said companies would go on shouldering a large share of the work of readying younger workers. "Companies, colleges and the individuals themselves are all equal stakeholders," he said.
