As part of a significant reorganisation, ClearTax has laid off 25% of its workforce, with new hires being among the most affected. Two months after being employed in June, the software developers were let go on August 1st, according to multiple “OpenToWork” and “LaidOff” profiles on LinkedIn.
IIT Graduates Laid Off Within 60 Days
Anoop Singh, a 2025 graduate of IIT Guwahati and one of the laid-off workers, posted something on LinkedIn that he “never thought he would have to.” Singh, a software engineer who started working for the company in June of this year, said that it felt “profoundly unfair”, in part because he was not given a “real chance to prove his long-term value”.
ClearTax’s Official Response to Layoffs
A ClearTax representative responded by stating that the company recently implemented a more extensive strategic organisational restructure that affected approximately 16% of its personnel, including a few early-career individuals.
This was a difficult choice, and ClearTax sincerely appreciates the contributions of all those impacted. Through outreach to industry partners, the corporation also announced that it had extended improved severance payouts, maintained health insurance, and actively provided outplacement support.
The layoffs are described in Clear’s statement as a strategic decision to “reshape teams to enhance agility and future-readiness”, but LinkedIn profiles from impacted employees show sudden departures, some within 60 days of joining the company.
ClearTax’s Growth and Expansion
Originally founded as ClearTax, the company changed its name to Clear in 2021 to better represent its expanded product line, which now includes corporate analytics, financial automation, and compliance solutions.
Serving CFOs and finance teams, Clear has established itself as a growth-stage fintech company with operations in India, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, France, Belgium, and other international countries.
Concerns About Early-Career Hiring Practices
The layoffs raise concerns about internal recalibrations notwithstanding recent expansion. The scope and suddenness of the layoffs, particularly of campus hires, have sparked conversations about hiring accountability and transparency in the tech industry, even if Clear’s letter to People Matters emphasised that the company is still “financially strong”.
IT Graduates Living with a Nightmare
A wider issue in India’s IT employment market is brought to light by the incident as well: the risk early-career professionals confront in the face of shifting corporate goals.
A lot of the impacted IIT grads are currently looking for new jobs, but many are wary because of the experience. Concerns have been voiced by some in the academic and human resources communities regarding how businesses handle the welfare and expectations of new hires, especially those who are hired through stringent campus placement procedures.
The obligation to engage empathetically and communicate clearly remains crucial when businesses reorganise to accommodate future demands, particularly when young professionals’ careers and confidence are at stake.
This year, Capgemini India expects to hire between 40,000 and 45,000 people, despite mounting concerns about hiring in the information technology (IT) sector. Between 35 and 40% of these will be lateral hiring, CEO Ashwin Yardi told the Hindu Business Line.
The number of projects being routed to India is steadily increasing for Capgemini, which already has about 175,000 employees there. India is becoming a more alluring delivery base as clients seek to reduce expenses and increase efficiency. According to Yardi, the company’s total sales performance is anticipated to benefit from this demand.
AI Takes Center Stage in Capgemini’s Workforce Strategy
The French IT services company’s Indian division has partnered with more than 50 institutions and campuses to facilitate hiring, and the current season’s hiring process is already under way. Early artificial intelligence (AI) training will be a major priority for new hires, guaranteeing that young talent is ready for the rapidly changing AI landscape of today.
Capgemini vs TCS & Infosys: Who’s Hiring in 2025?
Capgemini’s hiring news follows Tata Consultancy Services’ (TCS) statement that it would lay off around 12,000 workers, or 2% of its global workforce, over the course of the year. On the other hand, Salil Parekh, the CEO of Infosys, affirmed the company’s intention to increase its workforce: “In the first quarter, we hired over 17,000 people (gross hiring), and we intend to hire roughly 20,000 college graduates this year,” he told The Times of India.
WNS Acquisition and Its Impact on Capgemini’s Future
In the meantime, Capgemini announced last month that it would acquire business process outsourcing (BPO) company WNS for $3.3 billion. The goal of the transaction was to combine the companies’ strengths and satisfy the increasing demand from businesses for sophisticated, automated services. The old BPO model may be impacted by AI, which might have an effect on the industry’s long-term earnings, according to some analysts. Nevertheless, Capgemini anticipates that the WNS agreement will increase profits rather rapidly.
By 2026, the company anticipates a 4% increase in profits per share (EPS), followed by a 7% increase the following year. However, the overall business outlook is still cautious. A recent Reuters story claims that Capgemini has reduced its full-year revenue forecast because of weak demand and unpredictability in the world economy. In contrast to its previous prediction of -2% to +2% growth, the company now anticipates growth in the range of -1% to +1%.
India’s IT Job Market: Layoffs, Hope, and the AI Shift
Recent industry data gathered by Nasscom and independent market experts indicates that between 2023 and 2025, over 100,000 jobs were lost in India’s tech sector, primarily in non-digital and mid-level management positions. As a result, Capgemini’s expansion plans provide a unique glimmer of hope in a conservative workforce.
Capgemini’s collaborations with Indian universities aim to develop skills in AI, machine learning, cloud computing, and cybersecurity in addition to recruiting. These collaborations aim to increase recent graduates’ AI preparedness by providing specialised learning materials, internship opportunities, and exposure to real-world projects.
Tata Consultancy Services, the biggest provider of IT services in India, announced on 27 July that it will cut 2% of its personnel in its 2026 fiscal year, mostly affecting middle and senior management.
About 12,200 positions will be lost as a result of the company’s retraining and redeploying of employees as it enters new markets, makes investments in new technologies, and uses AI. According to a statement from TCS, the action is a component of the company’s larger plan to become a “future-ready organisation” that emphasises personnel restructuring, market expansion, AI deployment, and technological expenditures.
The business also stated that this change is being carefully planned to guarantee that our clients’ service delivery won’t be impacted.
Why Is TCS Laying Off Employees?
India’s $283 billion IT industry has had to deal with customers delaying non-essential technology purchases due to low demand, ongoing inflation, and lingering trade policy uncertainties from the United States. K. Krithivasan, the CEO of TCS, stated this month that customer decision-making and project start times were delayed. As of June 30, 2025, TCS employed 613,069 people. In the most recent quarter, which ended in April and June, it added 5,000 new staff.
TCS Financials Amid Layoffs: Q1 2025 Results
On July 10, TCS announced that its net profit for the June quarter had increased by 6% to INR 12,760 crore. In the same period last year, the Tata group company reported a net profit of INR 12,040 crore. The company’s sales decreased 3% when considering constant currency, although it increased 1.3% to INR 63,437 crore from INR 62,613 crore in the same time last year. According to a corporate statement, its operating profit margin increased by 0.30% on a quarterly basis to 24.5% during the April–June period.
TCS Responds to Onboarding Delay Concerns
The largest IT services provider in India, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), has stated that it is still dedicated to onboarding all experts who have been offered positions, despite several reports that experienced hires in various cities have been facing extended delays in their joining dates. TCS can confirm that, as usual, TCS is committed to honouring all offers we have made, whether they are to experienced professionals or freshmen, according to the company’s statement provided to People Matters.
The company will onboard all of the people who have gotten an offer from TCS. The joining dates are chosen based on company need, and occasionally they are modified to accommodate our demands. In these situations, TCS stays in constant communication with each candidate and hopes they will soon join our team.
The clarification comes as professionals who claim to have resigned from their prior positions to join TCS, citing official offer letters and specific start dates, are becoming increasingly concerned. Many of these professionals were hired for lateral positions in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Delhi. Their experience ranged from two to eighteen years.
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Mphasis Group, a global, multicultural organization headquartered in Bengaluru, India, specializes in providing a suite of application development and maintenance services, infrastructure outsourcing services and business & knowledge process outsourcing solutions to clients around the world.
Mphasis Limited was incorporated on 10th August of the year 1992. It was formed after the merger of the US-based IT consulting company MphasiS Corporation and the Indian IT services company BFL Software Limited.
Mphasis Limitedis an IT services company based in Bangalore, India. The company provides infrastructure technology and applications outsourcing services, as well as architecture guidance, application development and integration, and application management services. It serves financial services, telecom, logistics, and technology industries.
The Company’s segments include Banking and Capital Market, Insurance, Information Technology, Communication and Entertainment and Emerging Industries. The geographical segments include United States of America, India, Asia Pacific and Europe, Middle East and Africa.
It offers cloud computing, cognitive solutions, digital services, securing businesses, application services and infrastructure services. The Company serves various industries such as banking and capital market which includes, retail banking, credit cards and payments, wealth management and brokerage, corporate banking solutions and investment banking technology. Its insurance industry includes, property and casualty, life and retirement and health. Its other industries consist of communications, energy and utilities, healthcare, life science, logistics, manufacturing and travel and transportation.
Mphasis – Logo and its meaning
With this logo, Mphasis aims to focus on Generation Z i.e. the generation ahead of the millennials. This focus has been derived from the future-focused customer strategies that Mphasis has been working towards throughout its cloud and cognitive transformation strategy and heralds the ‘next’ that Mphasis seeks to apply constantly.
Logo of Mphasis
Further, it symbolizes Front2BackTM Transformation, a unique approach architected by Mphasis to apply a customer-centric digital transformation to businesses.
Mphasis – Founders and History
Mphasis was founded in 1998 in Santa Monica by Jerry Rao and Jeroen Tas.
Founders of Mphasis
Mphasis was formed in June 2000 after the merger of the US-based IT consulting company Mphasis Corporation (founded in 1998 in Santa Monica by Jerry Rao and Jeroen Tas.) and the Indian IT services company BFL Software Limited (founded in 1992).
In June 2006 Electronic Data Systems (EDS) purchased a controlling stake in the company (42%) for $80 million and operated the company as an independent EDS unit.
On 13 May 2008, Hewlett-Packard confirmed that it had reached a deal with Electronic Data Systems to acquire the company for $13.9 billion. The deal was completed on 26 August 2008.
In September 2009 Mphasis changed its brand identity by dropping EDS association to become “Mphasis, an HP Company” after HP retired EDS Brand to become “HP Enterprise Services”. Mphasis operated as an independent HP subsidiary with its own board and continued to be listed on Indian markets as “Mphasis Limited”. HP owned close to 62% in Mphasis and Mphasis got around 50% of its revenues from HP.
Mphasis marked $1 billion in revenues and registered a consolidated revenue of Rs 50.37 billion ($1,099.3 million) for the year ended 31 October 2010 becoming the sixth Indian IT company to do that.
In February 2014, Mphasis changed its logo and the brand name as Mphasis Unleash the Next, seeking to boost business other than from parent Hewlett-Packard, its largest client.
Mphasis’ direct revenue grew 9.7% qoq and 25.2% yoy on a reported basis. In constant currency, revenue grew 10.9% qoq and 18.4% yoy.
Contour and Mphasis partner to accelerate the global trade finance.
Mphasis – Mission
Mphasis’ mission says “Our mission is to be a specialized enterprise at the confluence of people, profit and planer. Powered by inquisitive minds, we leverage our global talent and innovative blend of services and technology to deliver customer delight.”
Mphasis – Business Model
Mphasis provides information technology services to its customers around the world. Mphasis provides integrated solutions that include business process outsourcing, infrastructure technology, and application services. The application services offered by the company includes application development as well as applications maintenance and support services. The markets served by the company are financial services and insurance, healthcare, manufacturing, government, transportation, communications, and consumer and retail industries.
The CEO said, “Businesses have always had to keep up with the times. But the exponential growth of technology that the world has witnessed in the last few decades has given it a new meaning. Not only has the digital reality of ‘everyone is connected to everything’ paved the way for greater insights, it has also improved productivity and in the process radically transformed the role of the customer.”
Mphasis’s revenue is the ranked 7th among its top 10 competitors. The top 10 competitors average 2.9B. Over the last four quarters, Mphasis’s revenue has grown by 2.9%. The net profit grew 3.9% y-o-y but decreased 22.1% sequentially to ₹275.1 crore in the June quarter.
The growth will be mainly driven by the banking and capital markets and logistics & transportation sectors, which grew 22.1% and 21.6% y-o-y respectively during the quarter-ended June.
The company won new deals worth total contract value (TCV) of $259 million in Q1 with 79% of the deals belonging to the ‘new-gen’ services that basically refer to its digital business comprising cloud, automation, and related technologies.
Mphasis – Funding and Investors
Mphasis has raised a total of ₹5.3B in funding over 1 round. This was a Post-IPO Equity round raised on Apr 2, 2020, Blackstone Group being the lead investor.
Mphasis – Acquisitions
Mphasis has acquired 3 organizations. Their most recent acquisition was Stelligent on Nov 8, 2018. They acquired Stelligent for $25M.
Acquiree Name
Announced Date
Amount
About Aquired Company
Stelligent
Nov 8, 2018
$25M
Virginia-based cloud technology services company
Wyde
Aug 1, 2011
–
US-based insurance solution provider
Fortify Infrastructure Services
Apr 9, 2010
–
global provider of comprehensive end-to-end Remote IT Operations and Management
Mphasis – Turning Point
Takeover by the US-based private equity firm Blackstone and a sharp turnaround in HP channel, which constitutes nearly 30 per cent of its business, have changed the fortunes of the midcap IT company MphasiS.
The Bengaluru-based IT services firm got a new lease of life when Blackstone acquired a controlling 60.5 per cent stake in the company from Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) in September 2016. That apart, a sharp U-turn in the company’s HP segment, which was declining 15-20 per cent every year till two years ago, proved to be a boon. (HP/DXC is a common entity/ segment which emerged after HP merged with another company CSE, which is now called DXC.)
The turnaround is reflected in MphasiS’ stock price, which has nearly doubled (up 93.5 per cent) from Rs 500 on November 11, 2016 to Rs 968 as of November 12, 2018. The stock outperformed most of its peers in the IT segment and the S&P BSE Sensex and moved up 30 per cent during this period. Prior to this, MphasiS had remained subdued for six years, declining 14 per cent from Rs 581 apiece in November 2010 to Rs 500 in November 2016. IT stocks during this period have gained up to nearly 5,000 per cent.
Mphasis – Competitors
Mphasis competitors include Accenture (US), Wipro Limited, IBM, Infosys, Mindtree and Microland.
Midsize IT firm Mphasis expects to grow faster than the industry average in fiscal year 2021, as clients in banking and financial services spend more on technology to shift operations away from offices to the Cloud, following the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Our exposure to segments affected by the shutdown hasn’t been much, it’s mainly financial services, wealth management and security houses. The crisis has shown how every business is a digital business,” CEO Nitin Rakesh told ET.
In the weeks since the outbreak, Mphasis saw businesses forced to go digital in its main markets in the US and Europe and this is likely to continue.
With companies needing to shift to a virtual model, most customers are looking at how they can engage with clients in a seamless and contactless manner. The company will focus on doing just that. “For us, the ability to have the security architecture and design layer to do this while ensuring that you can carry your past investments with you will be key,” Rakesh said.
The further acceleration of digital transaction capability for digital contactless customer experience redesign and remote onboarding as well as leveraging data strategies could drive growth going forward.
There would be some short-term concerns around the outbreak, but the company had negligible exposure to industries like airlines which have been hit the hardest.
New-Jersey headquartered Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation is one of the world’s largest providers of IT services. But on April 18, it became a victim of Maze ransomware attack that has caused disruptions to its clients. The incident comes at a time when businesses have been already disrupted by coronavirus pandemic that has forced companies to turn to initiatives like work from home to ensure business continuity.
Cognizant released a statement on Saturday on its official website which stated, “Cognizant can confirm that a security incident involving our internal systems and causing service disruptions for some of our clients, is the result of a Maze ransomware attack.”
Cognizant has around 300,000 employees and over $16.8 billion in revenues. It handles the IT services for many of the top Fortune 500 companies. Cognizant has majority of its employees in India and the Philippines working from homes during the lockdown caused by Covid-19.
Among other services, Cognizant provides a wide range of outsourced IT services for the financial services sector. The financial sector accounted for over $5.8 billion of its total revenues in 2019. The company, that has 3 lakh employees working worldwide, said it was hit by the Maze ransomware group and is engaging law enforcement authorities to take some legal actions against the group.
In January, 2020, the Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI) had issued an alert warning to all U.S. companies about the Maze’s ill practices of threatening to release company information if the desired ransom is not paid to them.
Even after being attacked, Cognizant has not yet been named on a website that is associated with Maze attackers. The website has named other companies in the past for failing to fulfil the Maze related ransomware demand. Brett Callow, security analyst, said that the group could simply be A/B testing alternative negotiating strategies to see whether permitting companies to control the release of information results in better outcomes or not.
What is the Maze Ransomware?
The infamous Maze ransomware was discovered in 2019 and since then, it has gained notoriety. The anonymous hackers behind Maze have made headlines in recent months for publicly holding its victims hostage. The group is known for threatening to leak company’s valuable information if the target doesn’t pay its desired ransom.
The cyber criminals behind the Maze ransomware use a range of different techniques to gain entry to the companies it is targeting. It includes exploits kits, remote desktop connections with weak passwords or sophisticated fraudulent campaigns. The ransomware itself is sophisticated so that its code avoids detection by security programmes.
According to March 2020 McAfee analysis, Maze malware is a binary file of 32 bits usually packed as an EXE or a DLL file. This indicates that the Maze ransomware can also terminate debugging tools used to analyse its behaviour, including the IDA debugger, x32dbg, OllyDbg and more processes. So it is almost impossible for a ordinary firewall software to detect the threat.
Typically the goal of any ransomware attack is to infect computers in a private network and encrypt files on these computers and then demand a ransom to recover the files. According to experts Maze is different. The attacker in this case has the ability to format or transfer the data onto his or her server. The data is then held on this server until a ransom is paid to recover it. If the victim does not pay the expected ransom, the attackers then publish the data online in public.
According to Beenu Arora, CEO & co-founder of US-based cyber security company, Cyble, Maze ransomware operators are known to conduct their attack below the surface. They are known for stealing the company’s data first followed by locking their target systems. They fully understand their victim’s reputational risks and hence their approach is basically “steal, lock and inform.”
According to a report, the attackers even justified their actions in a statement saying:
“We want to show that the system is unreliable. The cybersecurity is weak. The people who should care about the security of the information are unreliable. We want to show that nobody cares about the users. Now it’s our turn. We will change the situation by making irresponsible companies pay for every data leak.”
Arora further added that the notorious ransomware group understands the brand value of the organization it plans to attack. It has turned into a well-funded network in recent months. The reason behind this is successful ransomware attacks due to growth in their group and organizations increasingly paying ransomware extortions as no options are left. Also, some certain cyber insurance companies are negotiating with the ransomware operators to make payments.
Maze has tried to target many U.S. Companies
The alleged targets of Maze have included the city of Pensacola in Florida, cybersecurity insurance provider Chubb Ltd. and Canadian construction company Bird Construction Inc., according to various media reports. The Maze group has claimed to post files from all three companies on its website. Now, the same might be done in case of Cognizant.
According to Brett Callow, a threat analyst at Emisoft, even though hackers linked to Maze have denied their involvement in the attack on Cognizant, it does not mean that Maze isn’t responsible for the attack. For the moment though, no Cognizant data has been advertised for sale or published online.
What are Steps being taken by Cognizant?
Cognizant has about 200,000 employees based in India. This means it must take the necessary steps to contain the ransomware in order to not cause any furthermore disruptions as its clients are spread across the world.
As a solution to this, Cognizant has said that it is looking into the incident and the company is also communicating with clients on the measures to be taken by them to deal with the disruptions. Cognizant quoted that their internal security teams along with the leading cyber defense firms are actively taking steps to contain this incident.
Cognizant has also engaged with the appropriate law enforcement authorities to take required legal actions. Cognizant is in ongoing communication with our clients. They have provided them with Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) which identify potentially malicious activity on a system and other technical information of a defensive nature.
