However, despite a massive increase in the number of employees, RIL’s employee expenses rose moderately at 5.3% in FY21, as against a compounded annual growth (CAGR) of 18.8% between FY18-FY20.
Reliance Industries (RIL) has emerged as the fifth Indian company to have a minimum headcount of two lakh employees, as the company transitions from being a pure commodity player to a services-driven conglomerate. According to its annual report for FY21, the company created over 75,000 new jobs in the pandemic year, taking its total headcount to 2,36,334.
However, despite a massive increase in the number of employees, RIL’s employee expenses rose moderately at 5.3% in FY21, as against a compounded annual growth (CAGR) of 18.8% between FY18-FY20.
“The increase of employee cost as a percentage over previous year depends on many factors, including the number of employees recruited/ resigned, level/ grade of employees recruited/ resigned, date of joining (whether beginning/ end of the year), annual increment and incentives,” a Reliance Industries spokesperson said.
On a consolidated basis, RIL had a headcount of 1,95,618 in FY20 and 1,94,056 at the end of March 2019. The spokesperson said there was no cut in variable pay in FY 2020-21.
According to its annual report, Reliance Retail has carried out aggressive hiring during the year and currently has two lakh-plus employees. “Reliance Retail also aggressively hired frontline employees. Of the total 65,000+ new hires, 53,000+ were freshers. Training interventions, induction and role-readiness programmes were deployed on a massive scale to make them job-ready in the shortest possible time. It also hired and trained 15,000 delivery partners,” the report said.
The net revenues of RIL declined for the first time in the last five years. RIL’s topline plunged 21.8% in FY21 to Rs 4.7 lakh crore on the back of Rs 49,128 crore net profit, which was up by 24.8%. “The decrease in revenue was primarily due to lower volumes and realisation across key products in the O2C segment. Revenue in the retail segment was impacted by store closures, operational disruptions, and significantly lower footfalls in view of the pandemic situation. This was partially offset by higher revenue from the digital services segment on account of continued subscriber traction and higher ARPU,” Reliance said in the report.
Barring Coal India, the other three Indian companies with over two lakh employees belong to the services sector. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is the highest employment generator with close to five lakh employees, while Infosys had an headcount of 2.6 lakh as of March 2021. The number of employees of State Bank of India (SBI) stood at 2.5 lakh, Bloomberg data showed.
The headcount at Coal India, the country’s largest coal producer, has declined by 37,571 in the last four years to 2,72,445 at the end of FY20. Meanwhile, software exporters such as TCS, Infosys, HCL Technology, Wipro and Tech Mahindra have hired at a faster pace with a compounded rate of 5.9% between FY17-21. The combined headcount of these five software players stood at 12.4 lakh at the end of March 2021.
