TCS & Infosys Are Hiring Fewer Freshers in 2026: The AI Skills That Improve Your Placement Odds

Yes — India's top IT companies are hiring fewer freshers than the 2021–22 boom, and shifting to "AI-first" delivery: TCS announced ~12,000 role cuts even as revenue rose, and four IT majors shed 42,000+ employees in two years. Your best response is not panic — it is building demonstrable AI and data skills that improve your placement odds.

Written by the AI Academia team, Kolkata. Last updated: July 2026.

If you are in your final year heading into campus placements — or just graduated — you have probably seen the headlines and felt a knot in your stomach. Let's replace that anxiety with facts. This article walks through what is verifiably happening at TCS, Infosys, Wipro, and HCLTech, why it is happening, and exactly what a student can do about it in the next 90 days.

Is TCS hiring freshers in 2026?

Yes, but the era of mass, undifferentiated campus hiring is fading. Here is what the reported numbers say:

• TCS announced cuts of over 12,000 roles — about 2% of its 613,000+ global workforce — aimed primarily at middle and senior grades, not freshers, per Outlook Business.
• The same Outlook Business analysis reports that IT fresher hiring peaked at roughly 6 lakh in 2021–22, then fell to around 2.5 lakh the following year — and that the top five IT companies went from a record ~2.7 lakh net additions in FY22 to a reduction of 70,000 in FY24 and a net addition of just 9,500 in FY25.
• Combined headcount at TCS, Infosys, Wipro, and HCLTech fell by over 42,000 in two years — Wipro down about 25,200 since 2023, Infosys down 12,506, per Storyboard18.

There is a hopeful data point too: fresher hiring has not stopped. Wipro planned to onboard 10,000–12,000 freshers in FY26, per Business Standard — a target it later trimmed to 7,500–8,000 as the year stayed muted, per a Business Standard follow-up. Reduced, yes — but thousands of fresher seats still opened. Hiring has become selective, and selective is something you can prepare for.

Why are IT companies cutting jobs when revenue is growing?

This is the part that confuses most students. If business were bad, layoffs would make simple sense. But Business Standard reported that TCS and Infosys continued reducing staff even as revenue rose — TCS's Q1 FY26 revenue grew 1.3% to ₹63,437 crore, with net profit up 5.9%.

The explanation is structural. For thirty years, Indian IT ran on a "pyramid": hire thousands of freshers at the bottom, bill their hours to clients, promote a fraction upward. AI and automation break that pyramid, because a lot of the routine work at the bottom and middle — testing, maintenance, standard code, documentation — can now be partly done by AI tools. Outlook Business calls this the collapse of the traditional talent pyramid: the same revenue now needs fewer people, so revenue per employee rises while headcount falls.

Two more signals from the Outlook Business report are worth knowing: entry-level IT salaries have stayed nearly static at ₹3–3.5 lakh per annum for years, and "bench time" (how long a company keeps a non-billable employee before acting) has shrunk from 80–90 days to roughly 30–40 days. Translation: companies pay less for generic skills and have less patience for them. They pay more, and compete harder, for people who can work with AI.

This split is not limited to IT services. Across banking, retail, and healthcare, AI hiring is growing even as routine tech roles shrink — we break down both sides of that story in India's AI jobs paradox in 2026.

What does "AI-first" actually mean for a fresh graduate?

"AI-first" is not a slogan — it changes what the entry-level job is. Here is the shift in plain terms:

The old campus path (2015–2022)	The AI-first path (2025 onwards)
Any degree + decent marks → mass aptitude test → generic offer	Skill-based assessments; demonstrated capability in AI/data/cloud unlocks better tracks
Company trains you for months after joining	You arrive already able to build; training tops you up
One standard package for everyone (~₹3–3.5 LPA, per Outlook Business)	Differentiated pay: higher tracks for scarce, provable skills
Certificates and marks were the currency	Working projects you can demo are the currency
Job security came from headcount growth	Career resilience comes from skills that complement AI, not compete with it

Notice what did not change: companies still need people. They need different people — and a final-year student has enough time to become one of them.

Which AI skills do IT companies actually want in 2026?

You do not need to learn everything. You need two or three of these at "I built something and can explain it" depth:

Skill	Roles it unlocks	How to start
Python + data basics (SQL, pandas)	Data analyst, automation engineer, every AI role's foundation	Learn Python first — our guide to Python courses in Kolkata covers realistic paths and costs
Generative AI (LLM APIs, prompt engineering, RAG)	GenAI developer, AI application engineer, AI-assisted roles in every function	Build one project: a chatbot that answers questions from your college's documents
Agentic AI (AI agents that plan and execute multi-step tasks)	The fastest-growing niche — agent developers, AI workflow builders	Automate one real workflow end-to-end (e.g., research → summarise → email) — the exact skill our Agentic AI program is built around
Machine learning fundamentals	Junior data scientist, ML engineer (see what data scientists earn in India)	One clean project: predict something with real data, explain your choices
AI-powered digital marketing & analytics	Growth/marketing analyst — strong option for non-coders	Run a small campaign or analytics project for a local business or club

If you are comparing structured ways to learn these, we have an honest breakdown of what AI courses actually cost in Kolkata and how to choose a good one — including free options. And for a role-by-role view of where these skills lead, see our guide to AI jobs for freshers in India in 2026.

What should final-year students do before campus placements? A 90-day plan

Here is a realistic plan assuming 1.5–2 hours a day. Not easy, but absolutely doable alongside college.

1. Days 1–15: Python foundations. Variables to functions to working with files and libraries. Skip nothing, rush nothing.
2. Days 16–30: Data handling. SQL basics, pandas, and one small analysis of a real dataset (your city's data, cricket stats, anything you care about).
3. Days 31–45: Generative AI basics. Understand how LLMs work at a user level, learn prompt engineering properly, and call an LLM API from Python.
4. Days 46–60: Build project #1. A RAG chatbot: feed it documents (college syllabus, lab manuals), make it answer questions. Deploy it somewhere shareable.
5. Days 61–75: Build project #2. An AI agent that automates a multi-step task you actually do — collecting placement notices, summarising news, drafting emails.
6. Days 76–85: Portfolio and resume. Put both projects on GitHub with clear READMEs. Then build an ATS-friendly resume around them — our free AI resume builder was made exactly for placement season and costs nothing.
7. Days 86–90: Interview prep. Practise explaining your projects out loud: what you built, why, what broke, what you'd improve. That conversation is where shortlists turn into offers.

Students targeting data roles can swap project #2 for an ML project — our guide to data science courses in Kolkata maps that route in detail.

Where AI Academia fits in (honestly)

You can self-learn everything above from free resources — many students do. Where a structured program helps is speed, feedback, and not getting lost. AI Academia is a Kolkata-based institute (since 2023, ISO 9001:2015 certified, MSME registered) offering job-focused programs in Generative AI, Agentic AI, Machine Learning, Python with Data Science, and Digital Marketing & Analytics — taught by mentors who are working professionals at companies such as Amazon, Accenture, Myntra, and Airtel.

Two plans: Self-Learn at ₹4,999 and Live Help at ₹11,999 (as of 2026 — confirm the latest at aiacademia.in). We hold a 4.8★ rating from 200+ reviews and have trained 1,300+ students. We offer career support — resume help, project guidance, interview prep — and we will never promise you a guaranteed job, because nobody honestly can.

The bottom line

The scary headlines are real: fewer generic fresher seats, a broken pyramid, an industry rebuilding itself around AI. But read the same data again and you'll see the other half of the story — companies are actively competing for graduates who can work with AI, and the skills that get you into that group are learnable in months, not years. The students who act on this in 2026 are not the ones the headlines are about. Start your 90 days today.