Minimum CGPA for Placements: TCS, Infosys, Wipro and Other Top Recruiters (2026)

A junior from my old college messaged me last week. Final year, VTU, 6.4 CGPA, panicking. TCS had announced its drive and someone in her batch told her she wouldn't be eligible. She'd been up since midnight Googling "CGPA to percentage converter" and getting a different answer from every site.

Her real number was actually 6.85 (the friend who told her 6.4 had pulled the wrong figure). At VTU that works out to about 61%. Eligible. Crisis cancelled.

But this is exactly the reason I keep seeing the same question on Reddit, Quora, and in DMs: what CGPA do I actually need for placements? Everyone has heard "60% for TCS" approximately a hundred times. Almost no one is confident about what 60% means in their CGPA. And the honest answer is that it depends entirely on which university you're at.

So this is the page I wish someone had sent that junior at 1 AM. Cutoffs for the major recruiters, what those cutoffs actually translate to in CGPA terms for the most common universities, and a few rules that have killed more placement chances than the CGPA number itself.

The cutoff numbers (2025–26 season)

These are the publicly stated eligibility rules from the major service-based recruiters as of the current placement season. They change occasionally and special hiring tracks (TCS Digital, Infosys Power Programmer, Wipro WILP) have their own rules, so always cross-check the official drive document before applying. But for the standard fresher hiring track, these are the numbers.

Company	10th	12th	UG	Active backlogs
TCS (NQT)	60%	60%	60% / 6.0 CGPA	0 allowed
Infosys	60%	60%	60% / 6.0 CGPA	0 allowed
Wipro Elite	60%	60%	60% / 6.0 CGPA	0 allowed
Cognizant (GenC)	60%	60%	60% / 6.0 CGPA	0 allowed (no history)
Capgemini	60%	60%	60% / 6.0 CGPA	0 allowed
HCLTech	60%	60%	60% / 6.0 CGPA	0 allowed
Tech Mahindra	60%	60%	60% / 6.0 CGPA	0 allowed
Accenture	60%	60%	65% / 6.5 CGPA	0 allowed
LTIMindtree	60%	60%	60% / 6.0 CGPA	0 allowed
Mphasis	50%	50%	55% / 5.5 CGPA	0 allowed

"60% / 6.0 CGPA" is the company's stated rule. Whether 60% actually equals 6.0 CGPA at your university is a separate question, which we get to next.

What 60% actually means at your university

This is the part most students get wrong. A recruiter says "60%" and you mentally translate it to "6 CGPA" and assume you're safe. You might not be.

That mental shortcut only works at universities that use a straight CGPA × 10 formula. The universities using a correction factor (most of north and west India, including AKTU, SPPU, MAKAUT, JNTUH, and VTU's older 2015 / 2017 / 2018 schemes) need a higher CGPA to clear the same percentage cutoff. VTU's current 2022 scheme is the exception: it dropped the 0.75 subtraction so current VTU students use CGPA × 10 directly.

Here's the actual minimum CGPA you need to clear a 60% bar at the most common Indian universities:

University	Formula	CGPA needed for 60%
Anna University	CGPA × 10	6.00
RGPV	CGPA × 10	6.00
SRM, VIT, Amity	CGPA × 10	6.00
CBSE, Delhi University	CGPA × 9.5	6.32
JNTUH, GTU	(CGPA − 0.5) × 10	6.50
VTU (2022 scheme)	CGPA × 10	6.00
VTU (2015 / 2017 / 2018 schemes)	(CGPA − 0.75) × 10	6.75
AKTU	(CGPA − 0.75) × 10	6.75
SPPU	(CGPA − 0.75) × 10	6.75
MAKAUT	(CGPA − 0.75) × 10	6.75
Mumbai University	(CGPA × 7.1) + 11	6.90

Look at the spread. An AKTU student with 6.5 CGPA looks "almost there" if they're using the wrong mental model. They are not. They're at 57.5%, which is below the cutoff and will get filtered out by the form before a human ever looks at the application. (A VTU student with 6.5 under the 2022 scheme is actually at 65% and clears the bar. The 2022-scheme switch from (CGPA − 0.75) × 10 to CGPA × 10 removed exactly this kind of trap.)

Conversely, an Anna University student with 6.0 CGPA who thinks they're "borderline" is actually exactly at 60% and will clear the form filter. Different starting positions, same number on the marksheet.

If your university isn't in this table, run your CGPA through the calculator with the right formula and check the result against the company cutoff.

Service companies vs product companies: different game entirely

The cutoff conversation above is for service-based companies. TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant, Capgemini, the entire NASSCOM-flavoured tier of recruiters who hire in volumes of thousands. They use the percentage cutoff because they have to filter ten lakh applications down to something manageable, and the cutoff is the cheapest filter that exists.

Product companies do not work this way.

Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe, Atlassian, Flipkart, Razorpay, Zerodha, Postman, Salesforce, most fintech and SaaS startups. Almost none of them publish a CGPA cutoff. In practice the picture varies:

• At top-tier campuses (IITs, BITS, NITs) the resume shortlists often skew towards 8.0+, but it's not a hard rule. People with 7.2 absolutely make it through.
• At tier-2 and tier-3 colleges, product companies often skip the campus drive entirely and hire through coding contests, referrals, and off-campus DSA tests. CGPA barely enters the conversation. What gets you the interview is your Codeforces rating, your GitHub, your hackathon wins, your ICPC tag.
• For some niche teams (research, ML), publications and project depth matter more than either CGPA or DSA.

Here is an opinion that not everyone in this country will agree with, but I'll say it anyway: if your CGPA is below 7 and you want to crack a product company, your time is better spent on Leetcode and one good side project than on grinding for a CGPA improvement. The marginal value of moving from 6.8 to 7.4 is much smaller than the marginal value of moving from "can't solve mediums" to "solves mediums consistently." This isn't theoretical — it's what the actual hiring patterns from the last few placement seasons show.

The CGPA gate matters when you're trying to walk through one specific door. There are other doors.

The rules nobody warns you about

Now the part that genuinely costs people offers, often more than the CGPA number does.

Active backlogs are an instant filter

Having one active (uncleared) backlog at the time of the drive will get you rejected at TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant, and most others, regardless of how high your CGPA is. Cleared backlogs from earlier semesters are usually fine, but Cognizant and a few others have a stricter "no history of backlog" rule. Read the eligibility document of the specific drive twice. The phrase to look for is "history of arrears". That's the one that catches people.

The 10th and 12th cutoff is a trap

You spent four years fighting to push your engineering CGPA above 7. Then you read the TCS eligibility doc and discover they also require 60% in 10th and 12th. If your 12th board result was 58%, that 60% rule is a hard floor and no amount of engineering brilliance fixes it. There is no appeal. Check your 10th and 12th percentages right now if you haven't already, because finding out two days before the drive is a bad way to discover this.

Year of passing

Most service companies hire only "current year passing-out batch." If your degree got delayed by a year (semester drops, medical leave, double-degree), you're often locked out of campus drives even with a strong CGPA. Workarounds exist (TCS NQT off-campus, lateral hires, NQT for prior batch students) but the path is harder and less predictable.

The communication round is real

Infosys especially has a reputation for filtering out students in the HR / communication round even after they clear the technical test. Don't dismiss it as "just HR formality." The interviewers there are looking for clarity of speech, confidence, and basic English fluency, and they will reject otherwise-qualified candidates who can't string together a coherent answer about their final year project. Practice this. It is not optional.

What if you're sitting just below the cutoff?

If you're in pre-final year and you're at 58 percent — fix it. One more decent semester and you're across the line. Don't accept the current number as fixed. The CGPA formula at most universities weights your final-year grades, so the upside is real.

If you're in final year and the cutoff has already locked you out of the big service companies, your options narrow but they don't vanish:

• The off-campus versions of the same drives (TCS NQT, Infosys InfyTQ, Wipro Elite NLTH) use the same cutoffs but the timing is more flexible and the application volume per slot is different.
• Mid-tier service firms have lower bars. Mphasis, Hexaware, Persistent, Birlasoft, Sonata. The work and the package look similar, the cutoff is 55%.
• Product companies and well-funded startups, where the CGPA filter doesn't really apply. This is where being good at DSA actually pays off.
• GATE and higher studies, then re-entering the placement pipeline next year as a fresh batch. This is a longer path but a real one.

One thing I want to say plainly because I don't see it said often enough: a TCS offer at 3.6 LPA is not the only definition of "being placed." A lot of people who didn't clear TCS in the 2024 season are at startups now, in their first year, earning more than the people who did. The placement season feels enormous when you're inside it. It is not the rest of your life.

Sources and notes

• TCS NQT eligibility: TCS iON career portal
• Infosys hiring eligibility: Infosys careers portal, fresher recruitment section
• Wipro Elite National Talent Hunt: careers.wipro.com
• Cognizant GenC: Cognizant campus hiring documentation
• Capgemini India: capgemini.com/in-en/careers
• University CGPA conversion formulas: sourced from each university's official academic regulations, see CGPA to Percentage guide for full citations

Cutoffs current as of April 2026. Companies revise their hiring criteria periodically and individual drives may have additional filters. Always verify against the official drive document before applying. This page is independent and not affiliated with any of the companies named.

The opening anecdote is a composite. The situation is real, but names, colleges, and identifying details have been changed.