PTI 
  
New Delhi, Jul 23: Indian IT companies, grappling with an appreciating rupee, are also finding it hard to retain employees with the top-four firms - TCS, Infosys, Wipro and Satyam - witnessing an exodus of about 10,000 people in the first quarter of the current fiscal.

Although the four firms collectively hired more than 25,000 employees in the April-June period, the net addition was just 16,300 taking their total headcount to 2,85,357 employees.

Except for Satyam Computer, attrition rate was higher at Infosys, Tata Consultancy Service and Wipro from both the previous quarter as well as the year-ago period.

Analysts believe the high attrition rates, mostly triggered by employees seeking higher salaries, could adversely impact the companies' plans to improve utilisation rates.

TCS, the biggest in terms of revenue as well as headcount, saw an exodus of about 2,500 employees while just over 2,000 people quit the country's second largest software exporter Infosys.

The employee loss is estimated to be much higher at about 3,500 at Wipro, the country's third-biggest IT firm, while Satyam, the smallest of the four, saw the lowest number - about 1,600 people - leaving the group.

Interestingly, the April-June quarter is the period when most of the software firms implement annual wage hikes and see a sharp surge in new hirings.

TCS, Infosys, Wipro and Satyam had net additions of 5,512, 3,730, 4,319 and 2,716 employees, respectively, in the quarter.

"This year, we have seen a spike in the percentage of people who have gone for higher studies, which is not very uncommon to see in quarter one, because all admissions open up around this time," Pratik Kumar, Vice-President (Human Resource), Wipro told analysts in a conference call to discuss the company's quarterly results.

Wipro witnessed a sharp surge in attrition to 20 per cent from 17 per cent in the previous quarter and 15 per cent in the year-ago quarter.

TCS reported an attrition rate of 11.5 per cent - up from 10.6 per cent a year ago and 11.3 per cent in the previous quarter while it stood at 13.7 per cent for Infosys, unchanged from the previous quarter but higher than 11.9 per cent in the April-June period last year. Satyam saw its attrition rate fall to 14.9 per cent from 15.7 per cent in the January-March period this year and 19.2 per cent in the year-ago period.