April-September Numbers Indicate U-Shaped Recovery In IT Sector Jobs: InfoEdge CFO

Recruitment in the information technology industry is slowly gaining pace with the number in the first half of the current financial year indicating a U-shaped recovery, according to InfoEdge (India) Ltd. Chief Financial Officer Chintan Thakkar.

The recovery has been confirmed with the Q1 and Q2 numbers of leading IT companies, he told NDTV Profit.

“Employment and the rate of employment issues for the IT companies, in particular, seem to be easing out. Since Q4 of last year, we have been saying that we are getting out of a U-shaped recovery...It looks like we are on the path of recovery on the tax side, as well as on the non-tax side as well,” he said.

The InfoEdge CFO revealed that some growth was also being observed in the numbers from the recruitment consultancy firms.

“That's a good indicator because that tells us about the momentum when the recruitment consultant starts buying the subscription. That's a positive side,” he added.

The top executive further noted that his company does not have any plans to expand, it has its “plates full” with the existing four verticals—recruitment, education, matrimonial and real estate.

“I think it's highly unlikely that we would get into a fifth vertical or an additional product outside. Having said that, all our experiments and all the investments that we have right now, first one is the quality of data, particularly on the AI side and machine learning side,” Thakkar explained.

This would be the course of action in the coming two to three years, he said.

The InfoEdge CFO also elaborated on the strategy of the company on investments in PB Fintech Ltd., Zomato Ltd. and other companies.

“We have been the founding investors in both of these companies. And to add to it, we have many more early stage investments in these startups. These startup investments have almost become like our fifth vertical, and it creates a reasonable amount of value for our stakeholders,” he said.

Thakkar noted that the companies still have room to create value for stakeholders, and InfoEdge would remain invested in them.

“We do believe that these companies have created a big business. They have a lot more room to create a lot more value for their stakeholders, and they are likely to remain interested in time to come. Right now, the mindset is that we have backed them for 15 years. We'll continue to back them,” he said.

Shares of InfoEdge (India) Ltd. jumped 1.12% to touch an intraday high of Rs 8,170 apiece on the NSE on Monday. The stock was trading at Rs 8,130.35 per share at 11:05 a.m., while benchmark Nifty 50 was up by 1.8% at 24,336.6.