Mostly, no. For software, product and design roles in India, a cover letter is rarely what decides whether you get a call. Most applications through Naukri, LinkedIn Easy Apply or Instahyre don't even have a place for one, and on company forms that do, the field is usually optional.
But "rarely" isn't "never". There are a handful of situations where a short, specific note helps, and one where skipping it actively hurts. The trick is knowing which is which, and writing something short enough that it gets read when it matters.
When to skip it
If the form doesn't ask for one, don't attach one. If the cover letter field is optional on a careers page and you're applying to a large company through the general funnel, you can usually skip it. The first screen there is often a recruiter checking titles, years and skills against the job description. A letter doesn't change that check.
And if the only cover letter you could write right now is a generic one, skip it. A generic letter is worse than none. "I am writing to express my interest in the Software Engineer position at your esteemed organisation" tells the reader you sent the same thing to fifty companies. Everybody who reads applications has seen that sentence many times.
When to write one
These are the cases where it earns the twenty minutes:
- The form requires it. Some companies, particularly smaller ones and those hiring through Greenhouse, Lever or Ashby, make the field mandatory. Then it's being read, at least by someone.
- You're applying to a small startup. At a twenty-person company, the founder or the hiring manager is often reading applications directly. A few specific lines about why their product interests you does get noticed.
- Your resume needs a sentence of context. A career gap, a move from a services company to a product role, a switch from engineering to product management, relocating from another city. The letter is where you explain it before anyone has to guess.
- The posting asks a question. "Tell us why you want to work on payments" or "Include a note about a project you're proud of". Treat it as a mandatory question; it often functions as a first filter.
The context case is the most underused. Say you're a QA engineer at a services company moving into backend development, and your resume shows four years of testing. A recruiter scanning for backend experience may move on. Two sentences explaining that you've been writing the test automation framework in Java and building internal tools, and why you're making the move now, can change how the rest of the resume reads.
If that's your situation, our posts on career gaps on a resume and on moving from a service company to a product company go further.
What a good one looks like now
Short. Three short paragraphs, no more than about 200 words. Nobody reads a full page.
The first paragraph says which role and one specific reason you're interested in this company. Specific means something you couldn't say about their competitor.
The second gives one or two pieces of evidence that you can do the job, matched to what the posting asks for. Not a summary of your resume. Pick the most relevant thing and say it plainly.
The third, if needed, handles context: the gap, the switch, the relocation, your notice period if it's unusual. Then sign off.
Here's an example for a hypothetical backend engineer applying to a fintech startup:
Hi, I'm applying for the Backend Engineer role on the payouts team. I've been using your product to pay freelancers for a year, and the way you handle failed bank transfers is the first one I've seen that tells the user what actually went wrong.
For the last two years at my current company I've worked on our reconciliation service in Go, which matches a few lakh transactions a day against bank statements. I rewrote the retry logic for failed matches, which cut the number of cases the ops team had to resolve by hand. Your posting mentions idempotent payment APIs, and that's most of what I've been thinking about lately.
I'm on a 60-day notice period, with a buyout option. Happy to talk whenever suits you.
That's about 130 words. It names the role, says something true about the company, gives one relevant piece of evidence, and answers the question every Indian recruiter will ask anyway.
Openings to retire
A few lines appear in so many cover letters that they've become invisible:
"I am writing to apply for..." The reader knows. Start with the role and your reason in the same sentence.
"I am a passionate and hardworking individual." Everybody says this. Show it with the second paragraph instead.
"I believe I would be a great fit for your esteemed organisation." Let them decide that. And please drop "esteemed".
"Please find attached my resume." It's attached. They can see it.
Can you use AI to write it?
You can use it to get a first draft or to tighten one you've written. The risk is that every AI-written cover letter sounds the same, and readers increasingly recognise the voice: the triplets of adjectives, the "I am excited to bring my expertise", the closing line about contributing to the company's mission.
If you do use one, give it the posting, your resume, and the one specific reason you're interested, then cut whatever it adds that isn't true or isn't yours. Never let it invent a project, a number or an enthusiasm you don't have. We have a longer post on using ChatGPT or Claude on your resume without it making things up, and the same rules apply here.
The referral note is the new cover letter
In practice, the most read "cover letter" in Indian tech hiring is the message an employee forwards when they refer you. If someone at the company is referring you, give them three lines they can paste: the role, the job link, and one sentence on why you fit. That note goes straight to a hiring manager or recruiter with a name attached, which is more than a cover letter field ever gets.
So if you're choosing where to spend twenty minutes, a good referral request usually beats a good cover letter. How to ask for a referral covers how to write one without making it awkward.