Teamlease to top TCS in staff strength

Teamlease to top TCS in staff strength

HARSIMRAN SINGH NEW DELHI

[ TUESDAY, JANUARY 02, 2007 10:41:45 AM]

SOURCE: THE ECONOMIC TIMES

A TEMPORARY staffing company, Teamlease, is all set to become the country's largest private sector employer with 1 lakh people on its rolls by March 31, 2007. In the process, it would overtake India's largest software exporter, TCS, in terms of manpower strength. The IT major, till now the largest employer, has over 80,000 employees and is expected to add about 15,000 over the next 90 days.

Infosys, which proposes to take its staff strength up to 95,000 by March, too could tie with TCS as the second largest employer in the country. The Tata group, as a whole, employs just over 2 lakh people, 40% of which are in TCS. On the other hand, the AV Birla group as a whole has around 82,000 in its 37 companies. IBM India, meanwhile , has about 50,000 employees at present and is hiring at 1,000 per month.

Te a m l e a s e , which has over 60,000 employees, has client orders of 45,000 to be completed by March 31. If it does achieve this, it will have over 100,000 staff on its rolls, becoming the largest private sector employer in India. Teamlease , which meets the temporary manpower requirements of its clients, who are over 300, might become the largest employer but in terms of revenues it is still small.

Teamlease's turnover is about Rs 700 crore while that of TCS is over Rs 14,000 crore. Globally temporary staffing companies do have large manpower strengths as they meet the staffing requirements of a large number of their clients. "We are ramping up fast. At our 23 locations across India , we are hiring about 500-600 per day with an average of 16,000 new employees per month. We are doubling the number of recruiters to 300 this month and are on track to beat TCS," says Rituparna Chakraborty, v-p , Teamlease.

When contacted by ET, here's what a TCS spokesman had to say: "We are about 80,000 currently and are hiring continuously. We had announced a target to hire about 30,000 employees in fiscal 2006-07 , half of which we have already achieved." Most corporate biggies such as the Tatas, AV Birla group, Reliance ADAG, Bharti and RIL have big hiring plans for 2007 but none are willing to disclose them yet. Most of them, especially in the retail and IT spheres, fear rivals will lap up the available talent. Others ET spoke to chose to remain silent, because of the onset of quarterly results this month.