New Delhi: Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS), India’s biggest IT company on Wednesday announced salary hike for all its employees and said it will be effective October 1.

With this, IT bellwether company has become the first software firm in the country to announce pay hike in troubling times of Covid-19.

According to company report, TCS total headcount stands at 453,540.

“We want to thank all TCSers for the incredible resilience they have shown during these trying times. We are happy to announce that we will be rolling out salary increases, effective October 1st. We started onboarding freshers, and increased our recruitment globally in Q2, in anticipation of the growth trajectory we see ahead, said Milind Lakkad, Global Head, Human Resources in a statement.

The company reportedly said that salary hikes will be broadly in line with what the company did previous year. The move assumes significance as the company had announced in April that it will be freezing salary hikes.

Meanwhile, TCS said on Wednesday that its consolidated net profit for the September quarter fell to Rs 7,475 crore compared with Rs 8,042 crore last year.

The board has decided to go for share buyback proposal amounting to Rs 16,000 crore on back of 7.1% fall in quarterly profit. The company will be first IT company to go for buyback of its shares in FY21, last time it went for a share buyback was in 2018.

According to reports, the company is likely to buy 5,33,33,333 shares at Rs 3,000 per share. It has also reportedly set aside Rs 1,218 crore under exceptional items related to a U.S. lawsuit.