TCS workforce drops by nearly 20,000 in Q2 FY26, bringing total headcount below six lakh.
This a sharper fall than the planned 2% reduction announced in July.
Union NITES alleges forced resignations, says decline in attrition decline suggests the exits were not voluntary but “management-driven”.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on Thursday reported that its workforce was reduced by nearly 20,000, falling below six lakh in the quarter ending September 30, 2025. This comes after the company announced in July that it planned to lay off about 2% of its headcount, or roughly 12,200 employees.
While the reduction was expected to take place over FY26, second-quarter data shows that 19,755 employees left the company in just the past three months.
The Tata Group company’s closing headcount for Q2 stood at 593,314 employees, compared with 613,069 in Q1 FY26 — a decline of 3.2%.
Voluntary attrition in the IT services segment stood at 13.3% over the past 12 months, down 50 basis points.
However, the IT workers’ union Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES) alleged that this decline suggests the exits were not voluntary but “management-driven”.
“This is not a minor difference. Nearly 8,000 more employees than what TCS admitted have disappeared from the rolls. For a company of TCS’s scale, such underreporting cannot be dismissed as an error. It points to a deliberate attempt to downplay the scale of retrenchments and mislead regulators, policymakers, and the public,” said Harpreet Singh Saluja, President of NITES, calling the situation “deeply alarming”.
The union recently filed a complaint against the Mumbai-based IT major with Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, alleging that the company illegally terminated thousands of workers in Pune.
The complaint stated that around 2,500 employees in Pune alone had been forced to resign under pressure, without adherence to the mandatory provisions of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 — no notice, no compensation, and no government intimation.
“These actions have left thousands of families facing sudden financial and emotional distress,” the union said, adding that many employees with over a decade of loyal service were suddenly left without income, struggling to pay EMIs, school fees, and meet basic household needs. The abrupt job losses, it added, had created “a climate of fear, anxiety, and hopelessness” across Maharashtra’s IT workforce.
The complaint coincided with a spate of social media posts by current and former TCS employees alleging forced resignations. Several Reddit users claimed that large-scale layoffs were taking place, with around 40,000 employees let go by the end of September 2025.
On Thursday, TCS’s new Chief Human Resources Officer, Udeep Kunnumal, dismissed the “extremely exaggerated numbers” circulating online and urged that such figures be disregarded.
He told PTI that around 1% of the workforce — about 6,000 employees — were let go as part of a restructuring exercise initiated by the company.
Former CHRO Milind Lakkad had earlier said that the company was not “chasing any number” on job cuts, rejecting reports of 50,000–80,000 layoffs as “highly exaggerated and inaccurate”.
During the quarter, TCS recorded a one-time restructuring expense of ₹1,135 crore, providing termination benefits in line with company policy. Employee costs stood at ₹38,606 crore, forming 58.7% of total revenue of ₹65,799 crore, compared with 59.5% in the June quarter and 57% a year earlier.
Meanwhile, the company’s quarterly net profit fell 5.3% in the three months ending September 30, 2025, coming in at ₹12,075 crore, slightly below market estimates due to restructuring costs. TCS reported a 0.8% sequential rise in constant-currency revenue, reversing two consecutive quarters of decline.
The company declared a second interim dividend of ₹11 per share. TCS shares closed 1.16% higher at ₹3,061.95 on the BSE before the results were announced post-market hours on Thursday.
TCS also unveiled plans to expand its artificial intelligence operations by setting up a new business unit focused on AI infrastructure and building a 1GW-capacity AI data centre over the next seven years. Additionally, the company announced the acquisition of ListEngage for up to $72.8 million, excluding incentives and related costs, to enhance its Salesforce offerings.
