HCL revenue up 12% in Q1, looks to hire 22k freshers

HCL revenue up 12% in Q1, looks to hire 22k freshers

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Bengaluru:20.07.2021

HCL Technologies reported 11.7% growth in revenue in constant currency in the first quarter, compared to the same quarter last year. On a reported basis, revenue was up 15.5% to $2.7 billion.

The growth rates are a little lower than for peers. But in the corresponding quarter last year, at the peak of the pandemic, HCL had positive growth rates, compared to most of its peers. So, this quarter's growth is on top of that relatively better base. The company, like others in the industry, benefited from broad-based growth across geographies and verticals. Net income rose 12.8% to $436 million.

The company said it will hire 20,000-22,000 freshers this fiscal. "I will not be surprised if we even cross that number,” said V V Apparao, chief human resources officer. Last year the company on-boarded 14,600 freshers globally.

The company took in 3.444 people in the first quarter and is targeting another 6,000 in this quarter. "The freshers don’t have anything to unlearn and it is easy to train them on new age skills,” Apparao said, adding that demand was high in digital engineering, cloud enablement, analytics, user experience and cybersecurity. HCL has paid increments to its employees starting this month, after a previous round in October, indicating it is getting back to the regular cycles.

70% of the company’s employees have been vaccinated and all are expected to get both the shots by the end of September. “Return to office will increase and we do not see any risk in people coming,” Apparao said. Currently, just 3%, or about 4,000, people, are working from offices. HCL’s attrition rose to 11.8% from 9.9%sequentially on a LTM (last 12 months) basis, a trend that is likely to remain in the industry for the next 2-3 quarters. It had 176,499 people at the end of June.

The company, like others in the industry, benefited from broad-based growth across geographies and verticals

After 45 yrs, Shiv Nadar ends his innings at HCL

After 45 yrs, Shiv Nadar ends his innings at HCL

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Bengaluru:20.07.2021 

It’s the end of an extraordinary innings for Shiv Nadar. He's called it a day at HCL, which he started 45 years ago and which has now become a $10-billion IT powerhouse. Nadar, who turned 76 on July 14, stepped down on Monday as chief strategy officer & managing director. Last year, he had handed over the chairmanship to daughter Roshni Nadar-Malhotra.The board has designated him as chairman emeritus and strategic advisor to the board for five years. Nadar is among India's richest, with IIFL Wealth Hurun India Rich List estimating his wealth at Rs 1,41,700 crore.

HCL president and CEO C Vijayakumar will hold the additional designation of MD.

Nadar is also a major philanthropist, and as of March this year, he has invested over $988 million through the Shiv Nadar Foundation, impacting over 34,000 students from poor backgrounds. Nadar credits his success to the education and scholarships that he received during his early years.

Nadar founded HCL 45 years ago to make calculators and microprocessors. HCL initially had a hardware DNA, with many firsts in India, including the first Unix operating system, multiprocessor architecture, parallel Fortran, the PC, the first 8-bit microprocessor-based computer in 1978, the first relational database management system in 1983, client-server architecture in 1984.

Nadar started his career at the Delhi Cloth Mills (DCM) as a management trainee. He and five colleagues quit DCM in 1976 to set up a company to make PCs. They started it in a Delhi barsati, akin to a garage startup. They initially floated Microcomp that sold teledigital calculators that would provide enough cash to start the PC business. The founders put together Rs 20 lakh and HCL was born.

HCL pioneered remote infrastructure management, which was instrumental in the implementation and management of the infrastructure backbone of the National Stock Exchange. Nadar steered HCL to create several joint ventures and alliances with marquee partners such as Hewlett Packard, Cisco, Perot Systems, Deutsche Bank, and Toshiba. Nadar also cofounded NIIT in 1981, to deliver low-cost quality technical education. NIIT helped create a large pool of trained experts. Nadar was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2008.

Vanitha Naryanan appointed to HCL board

Bengaluru:

HCL Technologies has appointed Vanitha Narayanan as an independent director. The Board now includes four women directors. Narayanan last year retired after a career spanning three decades at IBM where she held multiple leading roles across the US and Asia-Pacific, including as MD and chairman of IBM India.

HCL Technologies chairperson Roshni Nadar-Malhotra, said, “She brings rich and diverse experience of navigating organisations through digital transformation journeys. Her deep knowledge and understanding of evolving marketing and technology landscape will be a great asset to HCL’s focus on driving growth.” TNN

REGION DIGEST

REGION DIGEST

20.07.2021

MGM chairman: Bid for hotel in individual capacity

With reference to the news report ‘MGM buys Le Meridien, may turn it into hospital,’ published in the Times of India on Monday (July 19), M K Rajagopalan, chairman of MGM Healthcare, said the Resolution Plan was submitted in his individual capacity for the resolution of Appu Hotels Limited, which was approved by the Adjudicating Authority NCLT, Chennai. Rajagopalan said he followed the due process of law set out under the IBC and the Resolution Plan was approved by the Adjudicating Authority after being satisfied that the RP is in conformity with the provisions of the IBC and IBBI Regulations 2016. Further, no decision has been taken regarding converting the Chennai hotel into a hospital, he said.

State submits report on prisoner murder: The state on Monday submitted a status report on the progress of the CB-CID investigation and certain documents in a sealed cover before the Madras high court on a plea seeking probe into the murder of a prisoner inside the Palayamkottai Central Prison in Tirunelveli district. During the previous hearing, the court had directed the state to submit a status report about the progress of CB-CID investigation.

Min condemns OPS statement on GAIL: State industries minister Thangam Thennarasu has condemned AIADMK coordinator O Panneerselvam’s statement against alleged laying of pipelines through farm lands by GAIL in Krishnagiri district. Terming the statement as mischievous, Thennarasu said such pipelaying projects commenced in Tamil Nadu way back in 2018 itself when AIADMK was in power. But OPS was issuing a statement as if the project was a new one and that pipeline were being laid only now, Thennarasu said in a statement on Monday. Such projects are taken up after getting consent from farmers by providing them higher compensation, Thennarasu said.

College admissions to begin on July 26

College admissions to begin on July 26

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

20.07.2021

Class XII students can apply for arts and science and engineering admissions online from July 26, higher education minister K Ponmudi told reporters on Monday. Students can download their marksheets from July 22.

“The CBSE Class XII results are likely to be declared before July 31. We will give one month time — till August 24 — so that CBSE students too will have enough time to apply for all the courses,” Ponmudi said. The Directorate of Technical Education (Dote) will conduct the engineering counselling and individual colleges can admit students to arts and science courses, he added.

For the 143 government arts and science colleges in TN, the directorate of collegiate education may conduct centralised admission and prepare a rank list for each course. Individual colleges will fill up seats based on the rank list.

56 students test positive for Covid at Thrissur medical college hospital

56 students test positive for Covid at Thrissur medical college hospital

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Thrissur:20.07.2021

As many as 39 MBBS students of Thrissur medical college hospital and 17 students of the dental college have tested positive for Covid-19. Some PG students and house surgeons at the college have also tested positive.

Sajeevan, 43, manager of Indian Coffee House (ICH), located at the medical college campus, died while under treatment for Covid-19. There are reports that another six staffers at the ICH have also tested positive.

Dr Lola, principal of the college, said a mass testing drive was carried out soon after the reports of infection among students surfaced. Students who were not having exams had been asked to return home immediately. Among the three batches of the students who are having exams now, eight students have tested positive.

Dr Lola disclosed that all the students who had tested positive had taken both doses of vaccines. “There are no students in the final year batch who have tested positive so far,” she said, adding that among the freshers, only one student has tested positive.

Dr Raveendran, the liaison of the medical college hospital, said some patients undergoing treatment at the hospital have also tested positive in the post-operative phase. He said the entry of visitors to the medical colleges will be restricted in the wake of the rise in cases. “We are also planning a ward reorganization to lessen crowding,” he said.

TN Class XII: 77% score above 400 marks, 5% more than 551

TN Class XII: 77% score above 400 marks, 5% more than 551

All 8L Registered For Class XII Exams Declared Pass

Chennai:20.07.2021 

All 8,16,473 students who had registered for Class XII TN board exams were declared pass under the weightage system on Monday. School education minister Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi released the results and within minutes the students got text messages on their registered mobile numbers with the mark details. Of the 8,16,973 students, 4,35,973 were girls and 3,80,500 were boys.

As many as 39,679 (4.86%) students got in the range of 551 marks to 600 marks. More than 77% of the students scored above 400 marks out of 600. “This year, 30,600 students scored between 551 marks and 600 marks in the science stream, compared to1,867 students the previous year. In commerce stream, 8,909 students scored in the same range, compared to 4,437 students last year. In the vocational group, 136 got above 551 marks,” he said.

The state government gave 50% weightage to Class X board exam marks, 20% to Class XI board marks and 30% to Class XII practical and internal assessment. As many as 33,557 students, who had arrears in Class XI, were also promoted due to Covid-19, Poyyamozhi said. He added that the optional exam for aggrieved students with the weightage system and exam for 39,000 private candidates will be held in September or October. TNN

FULL COVERAGE: P 2

No med admission sans OBC quota in AIQ: HC

MADRAS HC GIVES GOVT ONE WEEK

No med admission sans OBC quota in AIQ: HC

Centre Has No Choice, Rules Court

Sureshkumar.K@timesgroup.com

Chennai:20.07.2021 

This year’s medical admissions now hinge on the Union government implementing OBC reservation in All India Quota (AIQ) MBBS seats in state government colleges.

The Madras high court, slamming the Centre for its wilful disobedience of the July 27, 2020, judgment favouring BC reservation in AIQ, made it clear that admission into colleges in the state could now be only upon implementing such a quota. The court gave the Union government one week to indicate the mode of implementation of OBC quota in AIQ category.

“Not to implement the reservation is not a choice to the Union government,” the first bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy said, concurring with the submissions of senior advocate P Wilson.

‘Centre bid to skip OBC quota derogates order of HC’

The judges said on Monday, “The Union government’s attempt to not implement the OBC reservation quota in respect of the All India Quota (AIQ) seats for admission to medical courses in the state in the academic year 2021-22 appears to be contumacious, in derogation of the order dated July 27, 2020, passed by this court and contrary to the representation made before the Supreme Court.”

The court made the observations on a contempt plea moved by DMK against the Centre for failing to implement the high court order dated July 27, 2020 to provide OBC reservations in UG and PG medical courses from the present academic year.

When the plea came up for hearing, senior advocate P Wilson contended that despite the clear direction of the court to implement the reservation from the present academic year, the Union has now taken a stand that it cannot implement the same pending disposal of the Saloni Kumari case before the SC.

The apex court has made it clear that the Saloni Kumari case has nothing to do with the present case. Despite such clarification, the Union is refusing to implement the orders of this court, Wilson said.

Recording the submissions, the bench said, “It now appears that the Centre seeks to change track and keep the implementation of the OBC reservation as per the 1993 State Act in suspension till the Saloni Kumari case is decided by the SC.”

Prima facie, it is completely unacceptable that despite the union representing before the Supreme Court that the OBC reservation would be implemented in respect of the AIQ seats in this state in terms of the order of July 27, 2020, passed by this court, the union would now not implement the reservation on the specious ruse that the Saloni Kumari matter had first to be decided by the Supreme Court, the bench said.

The court then adjourned the hearing to July 26 for the union to file its affidavit.