French IT major, Capgemini to expand its employee base in India and increase headcount to touch 1-lakh professionals by end of April 2017. This news comes amidst growing concerns on protectionism experienced by the country.

The company seems to show positive hiring sentiments towards recruiting more freshers. Currently the IT giant has 98,800 employees with plans to touch 1 lakh by April-end, according to a statement by Capgemini India Chief Executive Srinivas Kandula to PTI.

Being the third largest foreign IT employer in the country, following Accenture and IBM in the lead, Kandula told Financial Express, about the focus on hiring freshers as they can taught necessary skills in rapidly-evolving technology world in the future. The number of offers and the campuses visited by the company for hiring has only increased in the recent past.

While hiring freshers does not entail any “unlearning” for the lateral hires. Capgemini currently looks at Asia’s third largest economy as the primary source of talent and the cost advantages offered are only secondary.

See: Overall Hiring Activity in India Reported 2% Decline in January 2017

Currently, the company is present in nine cities with head office at Mumbai’s outskirts focused on making lateral hirings. The company recruited 33,000 people at gross level to include freshers and laterals in 2016.

Further the company’s attrition rate has dropped by 20 percent, since the company prefers hiring locally in geographies such as to reduce reliance on H1 B visas. Also adding highly-skilled workers are welcome even under provisions of the new visa law in the US.

Stressing on the shift to digital, automation and cloud as the bigger threats to the IT sector, Kandula thinks there has been “over reaction” to visa concerns in the industry. Stating Nasscom findings, which says 1.5 million people will have to be re-skilled to serve the changing market dynamics, “Kandula said 30 percent of its staff is already trained in new technologies and it is aiming to progressively take this number up to 50 percent over the next two-three years.”

Also read: Hiring Activity to Grow in India by 10% to 15% in 2017

Feature Image credit: livemint.com