As the IT industry grapples with a general slowdown, Indian IT firms are optimising their sales and support teams.
According to data from research firm UnearthInsight, three of the five major IT service players have seen a year-on-year decrease in their sales and support headcount.
In Q2FY26, Tata Consultancy Services slashed its sales and support headcount by 5 per cent to 29,072 as against 30,636 employees in the same quarter last year, as per UnearthInsight's estimates.
Similarly, Wipro reduced its sales and support teams by 3 per cent to 14,863 (15,336). Tech Mahindra saw the sharpest decline of 8 per cent to 8,019 (8,715).
Meanwhile, Infosys and HCLTech bucked the trend with a 3 per cent and 1.5 per cent growth in sales and support teams, respectively.
Gaurav Vasu, Founder and CEO, UnearthInsight suggests that the downsizing is a result of the general slowdown in the IT industry. "Major players are cutting back on sales and support staff largely due to margin pressures, and with tech hiring subdued, the demand for these support roles has gone down as well," he said.
Structural correction
Sanchit Vir Gogia, Chief Analyst, Founder & CEO, Greyhound Research, said the reductions are not tactical but a structural correction driven by "market reality, buyer behaviour, margin pressure and rapid infusion of AI into the operating model."
"The traditional model of growth through expanding sales coverage and large support pyramids has lost its economic and strategic relevance. Large deals now begin with credibility and domain depth, not relationship coverage, and this favours smaller teams of industry specialists, cloud cost architects and security leads rather than large pools of account managers," he said.
Gogia believes that the adoption of AI-led automation is central to the ability of Indian IT firms to shrink such teams while maintaining or improving throughput. "AI can streamline marketing workflows, automate HR screening and queries, and handle most level-one support tasks, allowing companies to operate these functions with much leaner teams," he added.
Kamal Karanth, co-founder, Xpheno - a specialist staffing firm - says the rebalancing of the workforce structure is focused on reducing headcounts in roles that are entry-level, rule-based, repeatable and hence transferable to automation and AI scopes.
Cognitive load
He added that though the overall figure has gone down, there has been an increase in headcounts in roles with higher cognitive loads that are best done by human talent and not entirely transferable to automation or AI.
Vasu further noted that even when broader IT environment starts to recover, the improvement will not show up immediately in support roles. "It typically takes two quarters for higher demand and project flow to stabilise before companies begin expanding hiring in support and other enabling functions again," he said.
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Published on November 27, 2025
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