Three of theworld’s largest IT services companies, Capgemini SE, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., and EPAM Systems Inc., have found a seemingly contrarian hack to both grow and maintain operating margins: increase India headcount.
Analysts see this as the beginning of a new trend as artificial intelligence (AI)-based technologies increasingly become part of IT services workflows and give rise to demand for tech workers to monitor their deployment. India’s talent pool seems to offer a competitive staffing solution for this need.
This comes at a time when some among their biggest Indian peers are trimming workforce.
In calendar year 2025, Capgemini, Cognizant and EPAM ended with 230,000, 256,900, and 12,200 employees in India, making between a fifth and three-fourths of their total employees, respectively.
Distinct India hiring trend
The three companies increased their India headcount compared with the year-ago period, both in absolute terms, and also as a percentage of total headcount. Local hiring also drove overall headcount addition.
Capgemini’s headcount addition in India made up 73% of the total increase in overall headcount. The company ended last year with 423,000 employees, an expansion of 81,900 from the previous year.
To be sure, much of the increase was on account of acquisition of WNS, a New York-based business process management company. On 17 October 2025, the Paris-listed IT services company acquired WNS (Holdings) Ltd for $3.3 billion. WNS had 66,000 employees of which about 44,000 were in India.
On the other hand, Cognizant and Newton, Pennsylvania-headquartered EPAM ended last calendar year with 351,600 and 62,850 employees, up by 14,800 and 1,650 people, respectively. Most of this headcount was led by their India teams, which offset headcount decline in other geographies.
While India has historically been the largest employee base for Teaneck, New Jersey-based Cognizant, it became EPAM’s largest such base in 2024, surpassing Ukraine, which until December 2023 was its largest market. A key reason for a shift in workforce was the Russia-Ukraine war, which prompted EPAM’s management to shift employees out of conflict zones from February 2022.
Indian workers, revenue upside
As the India headcount increased, the companies grew faster. Capgemini, , and EPAM reported $26 billion, $21.1 billion, and $5.5 billion in revenue last year, growing 1.67%, 6.95%, and 15.42%, respectively. Each of them performed better than the year-ago period.
While Capgemini’s revenue had declined 1.9% in FY24, Cognizant’s and EPAM’s revenue grew 1.98% and 0.8%, respectively. The three companies follow a January-December financial calendar.
On the other hand, Luxembourg-based Globant S.A. saw the reverse. Last year, its revenue grew 1.62% to $2.45 billion, as against a growth of 15.26% in FY24. At the same time, its India headcount also declined. Much of this slowdown was attributed to tepid business from media and entertainment companies, which make up about a fifth of its overall business.
At the end of 2025, the company had 5,296 employees in ‘new markets’ including Asia, Africa, and Oceania whereas a year ago, the company had 5,513 employees in India alone. The company’s total headcount also declined by more than 2,500 last year and it ended with 28,773 employees.
The company did not disclose its India headcount separately in its FY25 annual report and Mint could not independently ascertain the same.
It is also not clear if the changes in headcount were because of freshers or lateral hires. Questions sent to Capgemini, , EPAM, and Globant on Tuesday went unanswered.
Talent at scale, optimal cost
At least one analyst said the increase in India headcount is primarily to make use of skilled talent at scale and boost operating margins.
Ramkumar Ramamoorthy, partner at Catalincs, a Chennai-based tech growth advisory firm, said the first reason was that Covid pandemic showed that work could be delivered from anywhere in the world. “Second, India has emerged as the largest powerhouse of digital talent, especially cloud, data analytics, AI and cybersecurity.”
And the more important reason is “the increase in large deal signings—especially with significant productivity gains built in—has pushed companies to move more work offshore to protect or increase margins,” Ramamoorthy said.
Cognizant, Capgemini, EPAM, and Globant ended last year with operating margins of 16.1%, 9.8%, 9.5%, and 7%, respectively. Yet, save Cognizant, whose margins jumped 140 basis points last year, each of the remaining three companies reported a decline in profitability.
In contrast, India’s five largest software service providers including Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Infosys Ltd, HCL Technologies Ltd, Wipro Ltd, and Tech Mahindra Ltd reported operating margins of 25.2%, 21.2%, 18.6%, 17.6%, and 13.1%, respectively.
, which follow the April-March fiscal year, do not provide a geography-based employee count, even though they have at least three-fourths of their workforce, like Cognizant, is based in India.
Automation baby steps, oversight
The go-India trend comes as the rise of automation tools forces to give discounts to clients and make upfront investments in AI technology, both of which hurt margins. AI tools also threaten hiring as much of the human work including software maintenance, development, and coding can now be automated.
However, a second expert said AI would lead to a repurposing of jobs.
“In what seems to be an irony of the sorts, the more AI is getting used and new agents are being written, the more has the need to monitor arisen,” Bernstein analysts Venugopal Garre and Nikhil Arela wrote in a note dated 9 March. “There have been numerous issues with adoption seen already and it does not take rocket science to know that most of the issues are yet to be seen as adoption widens.” AI strategies are more built around speeding up processes and reducing unit costs, not eliminating entire teams overnight, they added.
This implies that global IT services companies could further capitalize on India’s vast talent pool to assist in the AI needs of clients, that too at cheaper costs as compared with other parts of the world.
At the end of 2025, TCS and saw their headcount decline by 4.15% and 0.58% to 582,163 employees and 149,616 employees, respectively. Whereas, the headcount of Infosys, HCLTech, and Wipro rose 4.22%, 2.55% and 3.99% to 337,034 employees, 226,379 employees, and 242,021 employees, respectively.