CGPA Below 6.5? Which Tech Companies Still Hire Freshers in India

There is no single CGPA cutoff across the Indian IT industry — it is set per employer, and it has been drifting upward. Several large services firms have historically used 60% aggregate (around 6.0 CGPA) as their cutoff; Infosys raised its Specialist Engineer cutoff to 65% starting with recent batches. If your CGPA sits below 6.0, the realistic path is away from CGPA-gated drives entirely, toward employers that assess on skills or a test first.

# 1. What "CGPA criteria" actually means in these drives

The number usually applies across three separate checkpoints — 10th, 12th and your degree aggregate — not just the final CGPA. A candidate can clear the degree cutoff and still be filtered out by a single weak 12th-grade percentage, because employers that state this criterion tend to apply it at every level, not just the most recent one.

# 2. Cutoffs reported across major employers (verify before applying)

These numbers move every hiring season and are set per drive — they are not a published, standing company-wide policy anywhere we found, which means the only reliable number is the one on your specific application portal.

# 3. If your CGPA is below the common cutoffs

1. Target assessment-first employers. Startups, GCCs and smaller product companies more often lead with a coding round or take-home task, where a low CGPA doesn't auto-reject you before you're seen.
2. Build a visible project record. A portfolio or GitHub history is the thing a CGPA-gated process can't see — put it where a recruiter outside the gated process will.
3. Check "Immediate Joiner" and referral routes separately — a referral can sometimes route an application around an initial CGPA filter, though it rarely removes a joining-time check.
4. Re-read the posting, not a forwarded summary. CGPA requirements are the single most commonly misquoted criterion in shared placement messages — the number people repeat is often last year's.

# Not stated anywhere official

No major Indian IT employer publishes a blanket statement like "CGPA does not matter." Where a cutoff exists, it is stated on the specific drive's eligibility page — treat any number you haven't seen on an official portal as unverified.

# What Employed does and does not do here

Employed's eligibility filters are batch year, degree and branch — the fields consistently stated on a job description. CGPA and backlog status are not something Employed filters on, because they are set by drive-specific policy that a career-page job description rarely states. This guide reports the market pattern; it is not a claim about what any single live listing requires.

# Sources and limitations

Figures above are drawn from placement-prep trackers and drive notifications cross-referenced as of 12 October 2026, not a single primary source — CGPA policy is the fastest-moving criterion in this space and should be verified against the live application before you rely on it.