Bengaluru, Dec. 30 -- Infosys Ltd, India's second-largest software services provider, will hire fewer graduates directly out of college in the coming years, amplifying concerns for the country's engineering students as automation continues to shrink entry-level job opportunities. "INFY (Infosys) expects to hire fewer freshers in the future, enabled by higher productivity," said BMO Capital Markets analysts Keith Bachman, Bradley Clark, Adam J. Holets, and Jonathan Stein, on 16 December, citing interaction with the firm's management. "INFY also envisions potential for revenue per headcount to increase," the research firm said. "Management expects headcount to grow modestly over the next few years due to increasing employee productivity." The Bengaluru-based company becomes the first information technology (IT) services provider to explicitly forecast a decline in entry-level jobs as the sector grapples with a slowdown due to AI disruption, a decrease in client spending led by macroeconomic uncertainty, and visa curbs in the US. Fresher hiring has been muted over the last two years, a setback for about 1.3 million students graduating from thousands of engineering colleges in the country. India's largest engineering colleges expect IT outsourcers to hire fewer freshers for the batch of 2026, Mint reported on 17 November. To be sure, Infosys expects to hire more fresh graduates in the ongoing fiscal. "We had given guidance in terms of the fresh hiring for the year, and we had said 20,000 is what we expect," Jayesh Sanghrajka, chief financial officer of Infosys, said during the company's post-earnings press conference on 16 October. "We have hired in the first half, 12,000-plus freshers already. So we are well on our track to hire close to 20,000 this year." Infosys, whose revenue increased 3.85% year-over-year to $19.28 billion in FY25, hired 15,000 out-of-college candidates in the last fiscal. The company's commentary to reduce fresher hiring in the coming financial years is in contrast to the outlook of its peers. For now, peers Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., Tata Consultancy Services Ltd and HCL Technologies Ltd have guided for an increase in entry-level intake....