Kotak Mahindra Bank sharpened its focus on technology talent during FY26, hiring specialists in software engineering, DevOps, cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and data engineering, even as its overall workforce declined for the second consecutive year.
According to the bank’s FY26 Annual Report, recruitment was concentrated on strengthening technology capabilities and supporting its digital transformation strategy. The lender also facilitated around 6,500 internal employee movements through its AI-powered career platform, My Kareer, encouraging employees to explore new roles within the organisation.
Compared with the previous year, Kotak’s talent strategy placed greater emphasis on STEM hiring, leadership development and building future-ready technology skills.
The bank’s standalone headcount stood at 74,054 employees as of 31 March, 2026, down from 75,323 a year earlier. The number of permanent employees declined to 60,357 from 61,170, while non-permanent employees reduced to 13,697 from 14,153.
Despite the reduction in workforce, employee retention showed improvement. Permanent employee attrition fell to 32.5 per cent in FY26 from 33.3 per cent in FY25 and 39.6 per cent in FY24.
During the year, the bank recorded exits of 56 senior management employees, 1,503 middle management employees, 18,036 junior employees and 135 employees in other categories.
In the annual report, the bank had centralised more than 200 branch processes into operations hubs, allowing frontline employees to spend more time on customer engagement. He added that headcount optimisation is being driven through process simplification and greater use of technology rather than large-scale workforce reductions.
