A viral clip captures HCLTech employees chanting “we want hike” at chief executive C Vijayakumar during the company’s 50th anniversary event in Chennai.
The footage, shared widely on X and Instagram, shows a packed auditorium breaking into the chant as Vijayakumar arrived on stage.
The chant persisted for some time while the CEO remained on stage during the proceedings.
The event was part of HCLTech’s golden jubilee celebrations, marking the company’s 50th year in business.
Reactions to the video have been mixed, with some viewers finding it humorous and others tying it to wider compensation concerns in India’s IT sector.
Some commenters praised the employees for voicing their views candidly, while others said the chant was inappropriate for the setting.
The clip has kept circulating and generating discussion since the celebration.
Social media users were divided in their reactions, with some praising the employees for candidly expressing workplace concerns in a public setting, while others felt the moment undercut the tone of a company milestone event.
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.
(Image: Itsbilluid (CC BY-SA 3.0))
