Despite job cuts at Big Blue, IBM India says it will hire more people

New markets, slew of e-governance projects seen providing fuel for growth

Ashu Kumar

New Delhi, July 15: Despite reports of layoffs by its parent in the US, IBM India is confident of tiding over the slowdown without any drastic measures like retrenchment or salary cuts. Moreover, the company will continue to add more employees on its roll, according to Mr Abraham Thomas, managing director, IBM India.

“We are not going to go out of our way to cut costs, since we have always been a cost-conscious company. I don’t think we will reach a situation where we need to resort to extreme decisions like salary cuts or layoffs. In fact, IBM India will continue to hire more people this year,” Mr Thomas said.

According to international media reports, IBM has issued layoff notices to around 1,000 employees recently.

The job cuts have been carried out across all the functions from sales to services and manufacturing.

The latest layoff is reported to be in addition to the earlier job cuts which affected around 1,500 workers at its global services division of the company.

Though Mr Thomas agreed that the company was under pressure to further cut costs to be more competitive in the slowdown, he maintained that the company had always been practicing frugality over the years.

When asked about the impact of the slowdown on IBM India’s operations, he said, “In fact, IBM India is committed to grow at a higher rate than the industry growth rate. The company has a single digit share and we see enormous opportunity in Indian market to grow. And with this objective in mind, we have decided to explore new market and segments.”

IBM India has decided to pitch for government projects and has entered into the consumer personal computer segment to maintain its business growth despite slowdown. The company had also targeted several other areas to accelerate growth, Mr Thomas said.

The company recently entered into an understanding with the Haryana government to execute e-governance projects and has also launched two new series of computer systems to tap the consumer market where it has almost no presence.