After Infosys and Wipro, it is Tech Mahindra, which is planning to lay off 1500 employees in the upcoming financial quarter. The layoff, if it happens, will be equivalent to 1.2 per cent of Tech Mahindra's total workforce in India.
"We have a process of weeding out bottom performers every year and this year is no different," said a tech Mahindra Spokesperson.
One of the primary reasons for the recent layoffs in the Indian IT sector could be the rise of protectionist policies in the US due to the Donald Trump government's latest policies. There is speculation about an executive order regarding the H-1B visa (the main work visa used by Indian companies to send hundreds of IT workers for high-skilled technology work in the US), which would limit the number of visa allotments and make it tougher to receive them. Indian IT companies, which earn 60 per cent of their revenue in the US, are heavily reliant on American visa policies to deliver cheaper and more effective IT solutions.
While the fear of the new H1B policy is gripping Indian IT companies, such layoffs will only increase in the near future due to the advent of Artificial Intelligence and automated code generating techniques. With manual workload increasingly getting transferred to automatic machines, we might soon find lesser jobs in the Information Technology sector.
The Indian companies, however, are calling this a regular exercise. With Infosys, Wipro and now Tech Mahindra leading the offload of IT workers, there is a high possibility for other IT companies to follow through and do the same.
