IT major Cognizant, which has close to two lakh employees in India, will hand out over 18 per cent higher pay packages to entry-level engineers joining next year, according to industry sources. Engineering students graduating in June 2020 will see the offer made by the US-based company increase from Rs 3.38 lakh per annum to Rs 4 lakh, they said. IT companies are slated to visit campuses around August-September this year to present offer letters for next year. Confirming the salary increase, a Cognizant spokesperson said the company already offers higher packages for employees with "premium" skills in digital technologies. 

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"In line with that, we have decided to increase the compensation of entry-level engineering graduates, as digital technologies have become an integral part of engineering curricula in progressive institutions from where we recruit talent," the spokesperson said. The spokesperson pointed out that with the growing need for digital talent, Cognizant has also been investing in reskilling and upskilling of its employees at scale. "In calendar 2018 alone, we reskilled and upskilled over 1.5 lakh of our employees on digital skills," the spokesperson said.

According to placement officers, Cognizant usually hires about 15,000-20,000 freshers on an average every year. Entry-level annual salary for graduate engineers is currently around Rs 3.30-3.60 lakh. Cognizant, which gets about 33 per cent of its revenue from digital solutions, has been actively hiring from Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and has made more than 500 offers in IITs across India in the last three years. The Cognizant spokesperson, however, declined to comment on the number of job offers made at engineering campuses in India.

Interestingly, the move comes at a time when the company has said that as part of a realignment scheme, the "management is currently evaluating various strategies, including additional employee separation programmes". "The timing, nature and magnitude of these initiatives are not finalised at this time. As such, we cannot provide realignment charges on a forward-looking basis without unreasonable effort," the company said in its March 2019 quarter results.