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NEW DELHI: In a year that saw the stock markets crash and a serious liquidity crunch halt companies' expansion plans globally, the number of Indian companies that added new employees were 30% more than those that reduced manpower, according to an ET study.

The sample of 375 public listed companies of which employee data for the year ended March 2009 is available shows that three out of every five companies added people, led by top IT services firms and banks.

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The robust domestic demand has been keeping Indian companies busy even as those dependent on exports such as the textile industry have seen mass retrenchment. As many as 200 companies ended the financial year with more staff as against 150 which saw a decline in the number of employees. The remaining firms maintained their workforce during the year.

The three largest IT firms-TCS, Wipro and Infy-have added more than 10,000 employees each while public sector banking giant SBI added 26,691 people last fiscal and as of March 31, 2009 had 2.05 lakh, maintaining its position as the largest corporate employer in the country. A large part of the new employees at SBI joined as clerical staff, with officers constituting around 11% of those who were recruited during the year.

SBI, the largest recruiter after IT firm TCS, was much more aggressive in hiring than Wipro and Infosys. Wipro and Infosys together added 28,049 employees, just about 5% more than SBI alone. Although SBI chairman OP Bhatt could not be contacted for comments for this story, he had earlier made a public statement that the bank is going to recruit 20,000 people this fiscal.

One reason for such aggressive hiring is expansion in business as most public sector banks, led by SBI, have been pulling retail borrowers from private sector banks. Top private sector banks such as ICICI have gone slow on pushing retail loans after the credit crisis hiked the cost of capital and banks tightened their disbursements to control defaults.