Cognizant’s India unit’s headcount declined by 4,500 to reach 254,000 at the end of year 2023, according to the New Jersey-based IT major’s annual report. The company’s financial year is same as the calendar year — January-December.
Globally the company had approximately 347,700 employees at the end of 2023, which was lesser by 7,600 compared to December 31, 2022, when it had about 355,300 employees. Similar to India, headcount in North America also declined to 40,500 at the end of 2023 from 41,100 a year ago. Continental Europe and United Kingdom also saw a drop to end at 16,300 and 8,500, respectively, from 18,200 and 9,200, respectively a year ago.
The outliers were locations in the rest of the world where the total headcount increased marginally to 28,400 at the end of December, 2023 from 28,300 a year ago. The company also disclosed that due to high attrition that it faced, it hired more than 60,000 employees in 2023.
“In 2021 and most of 2022, we believe the IT industry as a whole, experienced unprecedented attrition. As a result, we hired over a hundred thousand new employees in each of 2021 and 2022, and 60,000 in 2023”, the company said. For the year ended December 31, 2023 its voluntary attrition – tech Services was 13.8% as compared to 25.6% for the year ended December 31, 2022.
The India headcount has fallen even as its delivery centers presence in the country today represents 90% of its total delivery centers on a square-foot basis. This was about 87% a year ago. Chennai, the largest globally for the company, had 9 million square feet at the end of December 2023. This was 10 million square feet at the end of December 2022. Even Hyderabad saw a fall of one million square feet to reach 3 million square feet by the end of 2023. Pune and Kolkata each had 3 million square feet and Bengaluru had 2 million square feet at the end of the last year.
“We believe our current facilities are adequate to support our operations in the immediate future, and that we will be able to obtain suitable additional facilities on commercially reasonable terms as needed,” the IT firm said in its annual report.