Will Infosys freeze recruitment, mulls pay cuts?

Employees of Infosys Technologies may have to live with a salary cut and without any significant increment, even as the IT bellwether has virtually frozen fresh recruitments on account of the global meltdown, a top company official has said.

"A part of our salary is determined by variable sales component, which is the percentage of the company's revenue," said Infosys' director for human resources T V Mohandas Pai.

"Since the revenues are down, the salaries will naturally be trimmed."

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a press conference here, Pai said the leading software exporter and business process outsourcing firm may also opt out of salary hikes because of the slowdown.

"The increments may not happen this year. But, if they do, they will be subdued."

Pai also maintained that the company will honour the 20,000 campus offers made last year, but added that fresh hiring has been frozen.

Infosys, India's second largest IT firm, had reported a net profit of Rs.16.41 billion ($335.5 million) for the third quarter of this fiscal, to log a 33 percent year growth. The jump was above expectations but below what it had logged in the past decade.

Speaking about the fallout of the $1.43-billion Satyam Computer Services scam, Pai said Infosys had, indeed, received offers from some customers of the rival group, which were being analysed.

"Our chief executive officer (K. Gopalakrishnan) had earlier made an announcement that we have received offers from Satyam customers," he said, adding: "But we do not go and poach on customers."

Gopalakrishnan had also said last month that there was no pro-active move on the part of his company to approach Satyam customers. "But if they come on their own, we will look into their proposals case-by-case."

Agencies