India's mid-cap IT firms bested the Big Four in hiring last fiscal

The Big Four of Indian IT ceded their crown as the industry's top hirers in FY25, beaten by smaller rivals which grew faster for the second year in a row.

- Jas Bardia

While the heavyweights added 9,442 employees, their mid-cap rivals together added 25,794, data from earnings reports showed.

The Big Four include Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Infosys Ltd, HCL Technologies Ltd and Wipro Ltd which earn above $10 billion annually, while the mid-cap IT firms are Tech Mahindra Ltd, LTIMindtree Ltd, Mphasis Ltd, Coforge Ltd, Persistent Systems Ltd, Hexaware Technologies Ltd, L&T Technology Services Ltd, Sonata Software Ltd, and Firstsource Solutions Ltd which earn $1-6.3 billion.

Mid-cap IT firms hired more as they grew faster, at least one analyst said.

"One simple reason for the mid-caps adding more net headcount last year as compared with the Big Four is that they have been growing faster than the larger peers," said Abhishek Kumar, equity research analyst at JM Financial.

Mid-caps other than Tech Mahindra saw revenue growth of 4.43-31.2% last fiscal, while the big three including TCS, Infosys, and HCLTech grew 3.78-4.3%. Wipro and Tech Mahindra reported a second straight year of revenue decline.

To be sure, the top four companies remain Indian information technology's biggest employers with about 1.39 million people on their rolls, while smaller firms employ 420,599, or a little more than a third of what their larger peers have.