Mysore (Karnataka), Jul 12 (IANS): Infosys Ltd, India's second largest IT bellwether, is back on hiring spree and plans to increase its headcount by a whopping 45,000 during this fiscal (2011-12), a top company official said here Tuesday.

"We will be hiring about 45,000 engineers worldwide in this fiscal (FY 2012), which will be 13,000 more than we projected (32,000) in April to meet the growing demand and increase the bench strength," Infosys chief executive S. Gopalakrishnan told reporters here.

Stepping up hiring was evident in the first quarter (April-June) when the global software major recruited 9,900 people as against the projected target of 6,500.

"We will be hiring about 12,000 people, including freshers and laterals in the second quarter (July-Sept) to train and mentor them to leverage the emerging outsourcing opportunities," the company's co-chairman designate said.

With 7,160 engineers leaving the company and its subsidiaries during the quarter under review (Q1), the net addition was 2,740, taking the total number of employees to 133,560 as against 130,820 quarter ago and 114,822 a year ago.

Return to double-digit growth after recovering from the global tech meltdown, the company hired about 43,120 people last fiscal (FY 2011), including 20,000 freshers against the estimated 25,000.

The attrition rate declined sequentially to 15.8 percent from 17 percent and remained flat during the last 12 months.

"The first quarter is typically the time when people look for higher education in the country or overseas. Of those (7,160) who left, about 30 percent of left in pursuit of higher studies. With better retention, we have reduced the attrition level by 1.2 percent," company's human resources executive Nandita Gujar said.