IT industry likely to hire 135,000 employees in FY26, projects Nasscom
AI-related revenues of IT companies are expected to go up significantly, say officials
- Feb 24, 2026,
- Updated Feb 24, 2026 4:54 PM IST
Despite rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI), India's software services sector continues to hire more people, according to executives at industry body Nasscom. The industry is estimated to have added around 135,000 people in the current financial year ending March 2026, compared with around 133,000 people in the previous financial year, said Rajesh Nambiar the president of Nasscom. A large portion of this growth, though, is estimated to have driven by the continued rise in Global Capability Centres in India.
The hiring figure comes at a time there is a lot of debate on how AI is going to impact the software services industry, with some predicting it will be wiped out in the next few years.
The overall hiring from campuses has come down significantly than what it was earlier, say officials, but point out that the industry as such has evolved over time.
"Bringing those domain knowledge skills combined with technology skills is something we are doubling down on," said Sindhu Gangadharan, the chairperson of Nasscom.
There is also a lot of effort that is now going into skilling and elevating the talent poll, officials said.
"Today, we have technologies that do a big part of the code generation, which means we are moving up the stack. We can use the benefit of what we do on the underlying stacks to focus our attention on the higher value use cases," said Gangadharan.
Overall, global IT spends are expected to rise 4.2% in calendar year 2026, slightly higher than the 3.8% growth in 2025, according to Nasscom.
"We are moving from an implementation partner to an orchestration partner. That:'s the biggest shift we have seen for the IT services industry," said Rajesh Nambiar, the president of Nasscom.
Overall, AI continues to gain scale. with AI revenues of IT companies this financial year estimated to be upwards of $10-12 billion, estimates Nasscom.
"Many companies have started declaring AI-related topline growth. It's a small portion now; in the best case, we are 5-6%. This could go up significantly," said Nambiar.
Nasscom officials point that today AI is fundamental part of every business proposal in a company and tech companies are also pivoting into figuring out how to use AI in a very significant way.
In the last few days, shares of IT services companies have seen a massive sell-off amid concerns that AI and agentic AI will hit the sector hard in the next few years.
On Tuesday, shares of Tech Mahindra, HCL Tech, Infosys and TCS among others tumbled between 4-7%. Overnight, shares of IBM plunged over 13% on the NYSE after AI startup Anthropic announced Claude can now streamline COBOL code, a programming language long used by banks, governments among other sectors on IBM mainframes.
Industry executives say AI-enabled tools could bring down the cost of upgrading legacy enterprise systems significantly. But this also offered a huge opportunity. Nasscom officials say upgrading legacy code like COBOL itself presents a $1.6 trillion opportunity for the IT industry.
Despite rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI), India's software services sector continues to hire more people, according to executives at industry body Nasscom. The industry is estimated to have added around 135,000 people in the current financial year ending March 2026, compared with around 133,000 people in the previous financial year, said Rajesh Nambiar the president of Nasscom. A large portion of this growth, though, is estimated to have driven by the continued rise in Global Capability Centres in India.
The hiring figure comes at a time there is a lot of debate on how AI is going to impact the software services industry, with some predicting it will be wiped out in the next few years.
The overall hiring from campuses has come down significantly than what it was earlier, say officials, but point out that the industry as such has evolved over time.
"Bringing those domain knowledge skills combined with technology skills is something we are doubling down on," said Sindhu Gangadharan, the chairperson of Nasscom.
There is also a lot of effort that is now going into skilling and elevating the talent poll, officials said.
"Today, we have technologies that do a big part of the code generation, which means we are moving up the stack. We can use the benefit of what we do on the underlying stacks to focus our attention on the higher value use cases," said Gangadharan.
Overall, global IT spends are expected to rise 4.2% in calendar year 2026, slightly higher than the 3.8% growth in 2025, according to Nasscom.
"We are moving from an implementation partner to an orchestration partner. That:'s the biggest shift we have seen for the IT services industry," said Rajesh Nambiar, the president of Nasscom.
Overall, AI continues to gain scale. with AI revenues of IT companies this financial year estimated to be upwards of $10-12 billion, estimates Nasscom.
"Many companies have started declaring AI-related topline growth. It's a small portion now; in the best case, we are 5-6%. This could go up significantly," said Nambiar.
Nasscom officials point that today AI is fundamental part of every business proposal in a company and tech companies are also pivoting into figuring out how to use AI in a very significant way.
In the last few days, shares of IT services companies have seen a massive sell-off amid concerns that AI and agentic AI will hit the sector hard in the next few years.
On Tuesday, shares of Tech Mahindra, HCL Tech, Infosys and TCS among others tumbled between 4-7%. Overnight, shares of IBM plunged over 13% on the NYSE after AI startup Anthropic announced Claude can now streamline COBOL code, a programming language long used by banks, governments among other sectors on IBM mainframes.
Industry executives say AI-enabled tools could bring down the cost of upgrading legacy enterprise systems significantly. But this also offered a huge opportunity. Nasscom officials say upgrading legacy code like COBOL itself presents a $1.6 trillion opportunity for the IT industry.