Happiest Minds to hire 300 people in each remaining quarter of FY22

Software firm Happiest Minds Technologies plans to hire 300 people in each of the remaining three quarters of the ongoing financial year.

The Bengaluru-based company has been facing high levels of attrition of late, with its attrition rate standing at 14.7 per cent in June quarter when its total headcount stood was at 3,538.

Market leader TCS had the lowest attrition at 8.6 per cent in June quarter (up from 7.2 per cent in March), followed by Infosys at 13.9 per cent (up from 10.9 per cent in March), Wipro at 15.5 per cent (up from 12 per cent in March), and the US-based Cognizant, which has two-thirds of its employees here, had 31 per cent attrition for the June quarter.

"We plan to add 300 people in each of the next three quarters of this fiscal. Our net headcount stood at 3,538 as of the June quarter after on-boarding 310 new people, and we hope to maintain the pace of hiring in every quarter of the fiscal," Happiest Minds executive vice-chairman Joseph Anantharaju said.

The hiring is necessitated due to attrition of those who have spent two-six years with the company and have bagged new jobs with huge hikes, and also to meet the rising demand which led to much higher utilisation level of the existing resources, which was marginally down to 82.1 per cent in Q1 from 82.6 per cent in Q4 of FY21, the company's managing director and chief financial officer Venkatraman Narayanan added.

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"So I am ready to budget for a net addition of 300 people in each of the next three quarters. Hope my sales team follow suit," Narayanan said.

Happiest Minds went public in the thick of the first wave of the pandemic last September with a primary share sale that was oversubscribed by 151 times, and has given over 562 per cent returns to the shareholders since then, Narayanan said.

The Ashok Soota-promoted 11-year-old company reported a nearly 29 per cent decline in consolidated net profit to Rs 35.73 crore in June 2021 quarter. However, its margin was at 25 per cent, which Anantharaju attributed to the pandemic-driven savings by way of lower overhead cost and the overall positive positive rub-off that the the IT industry got from the crisis.

He said the company's energy bill is down by Rs 65 lakh per month, while rentals have also fallen.

Narayanan attributed the decline in net profit to a higher base -- a deferred tax credit of Rs 18 crore and a Rs 9.5 crore tax claw back -- in the year-ago period. Revenue grew 41.4 per cent to Rs 331.52 crore in the June quarter.

(With PTI inputs)

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