MD, Chief Executive Officer & Director, Infosys
Infosys yet to take decision on wage hikes, bullish on AI revenues
Infosys CEO and CFO took questions from Moneycontrol on growth in AI revenues, decline in quarterly headcount and wage hikes for the year.
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About Salil Parekh
Salil Parekh, CEO and Managing Director of Infosys, has been discussing the company's talent strategy and AI adoption in several public appearances. At the company's 45th Annual General Meeting in May 2026, Parekh stated that Infosys recruited more than 20,000 college graduates during fiscal year 2026, bringing its total workforce to over 325,000 employees. He noted that the company's attrition rate was 12.6% for the year, which he described as a good outcome, and said the company planned a similar hiring target for the following financial year. Parekh also said Infosys had secured approximately $15 billion in large deals, of which 55% were net new, representing a 24% increase from the previous year. Parekh has emphasized that AI will expand rather than reduce the scope of work. At the Semafor World Economy event in May 2026, he said Infosys sees a $300 to $400 billion addressable market in AI-first services by 2030, with growth opportunities in financial services, energy, and telecommunications. He described the company's approach to reskilling all 300,000 employees on AI tools, categorizing them as "AI aware, AI builders, and AI masters." Parekh also stated that many clients are moving beyond AI pilots to enterprise-wide deployments, and that he believes AI will enable individuals who do not code to build systems and create outputs.
Transcript (11 segments)
I
Interviewer0:00
Suddenly, you know, you mentioned BFSI and energy and utilities a couple of times. Just wanted to understand, you know, what is giving you so much of confidence there. And as Ritu pointed out, some of your peers have spoken about, you know, client-specific issues and how discretionary spending continues to be a challenge. So, what is working for you in terms of the normal business as well as AI business? And AI also, you know, because you mentioned last time that it's now 5% of revenues for you. If you can give us a sense of where things stand now, it'll be really useful. In terms of acquisitions, do you see opportunities in AI startups? Is that something that you will look at? And how do you see Mphasis impacting your business? If you can give us some color on that. Jayesh, some details on, you know, the wage hikes for this year. How are you thinking about it? And I think after five, six quarters, we've seen employee count actually decline by over 8,000. So, why have the number of employees declined? Thanks.
S
Salil Parekh1:09
So, let me start on the financial services and that sort of environment what you mentioned. So, what we are seeing is, and some of this we shared in that AI investor day, like if you look at many all of our industry groups with our largest clients, we are already the AI partner of choice. And that's giving us a lot of traction. Now, you look, I mentioned financial services, energy utilities, but you look at manufacturing, you look at Telco. Some of the work we are doing in those industries, there are large programs in the pipeline for things which was within that six grouping. So, take an example of building agents. Take an example of legacy modernization. We are also seeing a lot of discussions with clients which are a combination of tech services and operations. A tech and ops type of businesses. And there again, we are in a good position which is in the pipeline. So, that is giving us a feeling that this is looking similar to where we were. Like it's not something has suddenly changed in that sense in that at least with our client base and so on at this stage what we see.
Then, I think on acquisitions, you've seen we did two acquisitions. The thing with that is, you know, we have the pipeline again. We have Jayesh and Shyam are looking at a very strong pipeline, but we have a very careful approach. Strategic fit, cultural fit, value fit. So, it has a lot of an integration like we have to know how it's going to integrate into where and so on. So, all that keeping in mind, we could see suddenly a lot, but suddenly it could be three quarters of nothing also. But we are in it, meaning we are looking. And what we did on acquisition was like health care, you know, health care we see a good market. We have a good business. We think we can do more. So, it was a good way to expand. And it's a good company there in the sense of we will be integrating and culturally it's aligned. Same on insurance, you know, that's a company which is working with the Guidewire platform package. So, that is something which we are very keen on expanding. So, like that acquisitions will continue.
On Mphasis, I think there are multiple things. So, because not everything is released to everyone, but we have some, let's say, good relationships with the company to understand a little bit from the outside. It is exposing more vulnerabilities than one thought possible previously. However, other models are also exposing vulnerabilities. It's a question of running those models in that way. My sense is it may also open up opportunities for work for Infosys which is to help clients who say, 'Look, how can we make sure that you don't succumb to that vulnerability?' So, we are looking at it both ways. And my means early very early discussions, but my sense is if we build a good capability in that, we could help our clients who say, 'Look, let's make sure that your vulnerabilities are better and quickly protected.'
AI revenue. AI revenue, yeah, exactly. Our AI, meaning we are not sharing the number, but it's growing.
I
Interviewer4:48
You're not sharing because last quarter you disclosed it for the first time. So, why are you not disclosing it?
S
Salil Parekh4:53
Well, what we did was in the AI investor day, it was a strategic sort of a outlook. So, we wanted to just make sure that we communicated that it is in a material way and it is growing nicely. At one stage, we will, but today we are not sharing it.
I
Interviewer5:11
Has it touched double digit of your revenue? Like is it now 10% of Infosys revenues?
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Salil Parekh5:16
Is it 10% or 15%? We're not sharing the number.
I
Interviewer5:20
I think the couple of questions for Jayesh. Yes, there. Yeah. So, if you look at net employee count.
J
Jayesh5:26
Yeah. So, if you look at the head count, our head count sequentially has gone down by 8,000 employees, but if you look at on a year-on-year basis, it's still grown by 5,000. There's always some quarterly seasonality, but if you keep that aside for a moment, head count is, you know, as a function of the number of people that you have, the utilization that you have, the volumes that you see. This quarter, the volumes were softer and, you know, that equation is what we'll end up net hiring plus the fresher that you have in the system. So, I think it's all, you know, the demand-supply equation and that's how it'll play out, you know, the output is a result at the end of the day in my mind. So, that's how the head count will play out. We don't really think, you know, it's going to be sequentially number which will keep going down, you know, at the end of the day. It's one of the things. I think the way you should look at it is a full year basis where we have still grown 5,000 as a head count. On the wage, we haven't really made a decision at this point in time with the quantum and the timing of it. Once we decide, we will let you know.