Wipro, one of the largest Indian IT companies, has not onboarded several techies despite giving out job offers as early as October 2021, Business Today has learnt.
One such IT worker told Business Today, “I had been given an offer letter way back in October 2021. It has almost been a year now, I am still waiting for Wipro to onboard me.”
Onboarding here refers to the process of initiating a new employee into the company. Employees are added to the payroll after onboarding, which means they get to draw a salary only once they have been onboarded by the company.
One candidate claims to have quit a job at Cognizant to join Wipro, but has not been onboarded yet. This has caused the candidate severe financial stress. “I had resigned Cognizant after I got an offer letter at Wipro in March this year. But now, I have no income source and I am struggling. Wipro’s HR is not even responding to my queries, they just send an automated email,” the candidate said.
Another one chipped in: “I had a decent job in a startup, but I wanted to join a well-established company. So, I resigned from there to join Wipro. It has been over 6 months; I have not been onboarded yet. HR only sends me an automated email that I will be informed 2 months before my onboarding, what do I eat till then? How do I survive? All my savings will be wiped out soon, how do I manage now?”
This is not the case with just these two IT professionals. Several others have told Business Today that they left their stable jobs after receiving an offer from Wipro, but are now left stranded.
This is the predicament of not just experienced professionals, but also of freshers who were placed at Wipro via their campuses or via off-campus placement drives.
“I was selected in November 2021, I got an offer letter as an ELITE engineer in January 2022. They said I had an option to go through the ‘Velocity Training’, and if I cleared it, I would get to join as a TURBO engineer,” a recent college graduate told Business Today.
ELITE and TURBO are names given to roles at Wipro. The ELITE role offers Rs 3.6 lakh per annum and TURBO offers Rs 5.5+1 lakh per annum. Velocity is a training employees have to go through to upgrade their role.
“My Velocity training started from April 18 and it ended on July 30. During this training, I attended 5-hour classes from 9 am to 2 pm. I submitted assignments and projects. And in the end did a capstone project with a group of 5 people,” the candidate added.
“We successfully passed the training programme and received offer letter for the TURBO role in July. I then got an email that my onboarding date is August 8. Then it got postponed to 28th September 2022 and now they have postponed it again without giving a date. I am in so much stress because I wasted my time and energy on this, I don’t even have the strength to face my parents,” the candidate exclaimed.
There are others who interned at Wipro without any compensation after receiving an offer letter. One such techie said, “I got an offer letter in December via campus placement. I also interned for them for free. But they kept postponing my onboarding. Now they just send me an automated email, no real person is responding to my queries. I feel like my career is ruined because I let go off offers from Tech Mahindra and HCL.”
There are several others who let go of offers from tech companies like Capgemini, HCL Tech, Tech Mahindra, Infosys, and several other startups because they had an offer letter from Wipro. Many of these employees are now regretting letting go off those offers.
“I also rejected offers from Capgemini, HCL Tech, and Infosys because I had an offer letter from Wipro. But now I regret this decision. I am extremely depressed and I am not able to survive without any income. This gap in my CV will negatively impact my career," one such candidate awaiting Wipro’s onboarding told Business Today.
The worst case has been of those whose offer was recalled by Wipro. A techie told Business Today, "I am in deep depression. Wipro recalled my offer letter after I waited for them to onboard me for months. I also let go off offers from two startups because I wanted to join a MNC."
Wipro maintains that it would honour all the offers made to “deserving candidates.” A company spokesperson told Business Today, “Wipro can confirm that it will honour all offer letters that have been made to deserving candidates.”
An expert closely tracking the IT sector told Business Today on the condition of anonymity, “All these offers were made when the IT sector was witnessing a boom, they had a plethora of projects so they went on a hiring spree. But the current global macroeconomic conditions have put a strain on the IT sector in general, not just Wipro. They do not have as many projects as they did previously and hence, they have muted hiring.”
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