IT services and consulting firm Accenture will lay off 2.5 per cent or 19,000 employees over a period of the next one and half years, the company said in a regulatory filing.

Accenture currently employs over 7 lakh people and is estimated to have the largest employee base of 3 lakh people in India.

"While we continue to hire, especially to support our strategic growth priorities, during the second quarter of fiscal 2023, we initiated actions to streamline our operations and transform our non-billable corporate functions to reduce costs.

"Over the next 18 months, these actions are expected to result in the departure of approximately 19,000 people (or 2.5 per cent of our current workforce)," the company said in a regulatory filing.

Over half of these departures will consist people in Accenture's non-billable corporate functions, the filing said.