No panel at the HFS India Summit 2026 explicitly debated campus hiring freezes. No executive referred to a ‘fresher slowdown’.
Yet, across three separate discussions on AI, service disruption and workforce transformation, several leaders pushed back against the idea of reducing entry-level hiring as operating models evolve.
At one of the sessions, titled ‘Vision Talk: Bane, Boon, or Breakthrough—What Human+AI Really Means for India’s IT Workforce’, Arindam Banerrji, Executive Vice President and Country Head for State Street India, addresses the issue directly.
“First of all, we should not even be thinking of giving up on hiring graduate talent. There’s a line of thinking that fresher hiring should be scaled down. I think it’s absolutely wrong, [and takes us down] the wrong track.”
Banerrji links his comment to the accelerating pace of change in both skills and business models.
“The DNA of an employee… is all about unlearning to learn. Our organisations need to measure up to that, because this cycle of unlearning and learning is no longer a 10-year cycle… It’s probably a one-year cycle.”
His remarks reflect a broader theme heard across panel discussions—AI is compressing learning cycles and altering task composition, but it is not eliminating the need for fresh talent.
AI as a Shift in Work Composition
Mitrankur Majumdar, EVP and Global Head of Services at Infosys, describes AI as a potential accelerator for early-career professionals.
“In my opinion, it’s going to be a breakthrough. And from an Indian perspective, [considering] the number of STEM graduates coming out of India, it’s a significant boon and breakthrough for young graduates… and early professionals.”
“It can allow them to leapfrog… traditional career paths. [Instead of beginning with highly task-oriented work], they can move more quickly into jobs centred on critical decision-making or problem-solving,” Majumdar added.
He stresses that while individual tasks may change, entire roles themselves are not disappearing.
“Legacy roles are not getting obsolete. What is happening is that within those roles, certain tasks which are repetitive, rule-based, and volume-dependent are shrinking. The centre of gravity is moving towards critical thinking, problem solving, and orchestration of workflows.”
The conversation focused less on workforce reduction and more on work redesign.
Veda Persad, Country Executive for India at Northern Trust, suggests that the change lies in how AI interacts with unstructured work.
“I don’t think skill sets are becoming obsolete. I think they’re diminishing.”
The difference now with AI, according to her, is that it is being allowed to operate more within unstructured spaces. That places humans in a position where they must apply judgement and critical thinking while expediting those processes.
She emphasised the need for discernment alongside automation.
Pressure on Traditional Models
Other panels acknowledged the growing strain on long-standing service models.
During a session on ‘Agents of Disruption—Rewiring the Future of Services’, Vivek Mohan, Managing Director (BU Partner), TPG Capital Asia, points to fundamental shifts in pricing and staffing approaches.
“First is the pricing model. This price-per-FTE, FTE-per-hour staffing, business model is dead.”
“Second, the pyramid model as it stands, which is linked to that pricing structure, where you hire 30,000 or 40,000 fresh graduates, push them through the system, and churn the pyramid upwards. That’s because the price-per-FTE model is broken,” he adds.
His remarks reflected mounting pressure on traditional scale-based leverage models. However, speakers across sessions drew a distinction between rethinking delivery economics and eliminating talent pipelines.
Majumdar notes that long-held assumptions about tenure are also being questioned.
“For a long time, the Indian IT industry has assumed that experience or tenure equals expertise. I think that will change.”
Sanjay Salunkhe, President and Global Head of Digital and Software Services at Hexaware Technologies, describes the change in structural terms. “We are calling the generation of decoupling of headcount from productivity.”
Yet, he too frames the moment as one of adaptation rather than displacement as the central challenge. “You will not lose your job to AI. You will lose your job to an AI-adept engineer.”
Talent Transformation as the Hardest Shift
In another discussion, Debashis Chatterjee, Board Member at Ascendion, identifies talent transition as the most difficult adjustment ahead.
“The hardest shift is talent transformation. Whether it’s talent coming from engineering colleges or transforming talent within your organisation—that will be really hard, and it has to happen at speed.”
Across discussions, the emphasis repeatedly returned to skills evolution, AI literacy and the accelerating pace of learning.
“The competition is not between human one and human two. It’s between human and machine,” Jay Doshi, MD and CIO at BT Group, frames the competition bluntly. “It’s not human in the loop with AI, it’s human in the lead with AI.”
Fresher Hiring Continues, But More Selectively
Wipro has trimmed its FY26 fresher hiring target to 8,000 from 10,000.
Saurabh Govil, Chief Human Resources Officer, Wipro, says, “This quarter, campus recruitment was muted...as we deliberately chose to slow down,” adding that the company will ramp it up the next quarter (Q4).
TCS has revealed its plans to increase hiring of freshers who possess niche AI skills.
Infosys, on the other hand, says it is on track to hire 20,000 freshers, and plans to hire the same number during the FY27. The company however raised entry-level salaries by offering compensation packages of up to ₹21 lakh per annum for fresh graduates hired into specialised technology roles.
However, India’s top five IT services firms have added just 17 net employees in the first nine months of FY26, marking an almost absolute freeze in hiring. The figure is a steep fall from the 17,764 net hires recorded in the same period last year.
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