HCLTech employees chanted “we want hike” at chief executive C Vijayakumar during the company’s 50th anniversary event in Chennai, in a video that has gone viral.
The clip, shared widely across platforms including X and Instagram, shows the auditorium erupting into the chant as Vijayakumar took the stage.
The chanting continued for some time while the CEO remained on stage during the celebration.
The event marked HCLTech’s golden jubilee, celebrating fifty years since the company’s founding.
The video has drawn mixed reactions online, with some viewers finding it amusing and others connecting it to broader pay concerns in India’s IT sector.
Some commenters praised the employees for speaking candidly, while others said the chant was inappropriate for the occasion.
The clip has continued to circulate widely since the celebration took place.
The episode has been widely shared and discussed as part of a broader conversation around compensation trends and employee sentiment within India’s information technology sector this year.
HCLTech, one of India’s largest IT services companies, employs hundreds of thousands of people globally, making internal sentiment around pay and benefits a recurring talking point whenever such moments become public.
Similar viral moments involving employees publicly airing workplace grievances at corporate events have periodically surfaced from other large companies in India in recent years, often prompting comparable debates online about appropriate conduct versus genuine expression of concerns.
The video’s spread illustrates how internal corporate moments, once captured on phone cameras and shared on social media, can quickly become part of wider public conversations about workplace culture and compensation across an entire industry.
C Vijayakumar has served as HCLTech’s chief executive officer, a role in which he has represented the company at major public events, including the golden jubilee celebration where the video was filmed.
The chant broke out as part of HCLTech’s golden jubilee celebrations in Chennai, an event that also featured other planned elements to mark the company’s fifty years in business.
(Image: Itsbilluid (CC BY-SA 3.0))
