India’s it sector is working its way up to the next level of computing such as AI and IoT, and TCS is no exception. This flagship IT company has topped the BW 500 Real rankings in the technology space for yet another year, and is placed at No. 16 on the list. TCS’s total income and total assets surged 12.4 times over last year as the company added size and scale to its balance sheet.
If the global IT sector is facing headwinds of automation and digitisation, TCS is embracing this change and scaling up at a rapid pace. TCS is also making progress in reskilling its workforce to the newer technologies. A digital competency programme has trained over 2 lakh employees and has armed them with over 6 lakh different competencies. Attrition rates in the company is one of the lowest in the industry at 10.5 per cent in FY 2017.
AI and automation are the two areas that the company is augmenting in its roster of digital applications. New areas such as conversational systems, natural language processing, Internet of Things platforms, image processing capabilities, and robotics are among the areas that the company is harnessing to expand its range of IT solutions.
Little surprise then, TCS is one of the leading innovators in the Indian technology space. TCS filed 493 patent applications in FY17, which has taken its total number of patent applications to 3,350.
Apart from its in-house capabilities, TCS is also partnering the innovation capabilities of startups, academic alliances and other technology partners. It has a Co-Innovation Network (COIN), which has expanded to cover 150 ecosystem partners, over 2,000 startups, with a further 27 partnerships in the academia.
TCS has also taken up quite a few complex IT programmes over the past year. In one such programme, it successfully engineered a split of the IT infrastructure of the world’s largest aluminium and bauxite manufacturing company. TCS provided solutions for one of the world’s largest banks to integrate its application programming interface to the back-office systems, which accounts for 85 per cent of the banks transactions.
“The key differentiators that enable TCS to strategically partner with these large global corporations are our deep contextual knowledge of customers’ business models, functions, processes, and systems; our proactive approach to innovation; and our commitment to delivery excellence,” noted Rajesh Gopinathan, MD & CEO in the annual report.
It has egged TCS to keep its competitive edge in the IT arena which has further seen TCS deliver an above-average industry financial performance. In fact, revenues of the firm have grown almost four-fold from Rs 30,029 crore in FY 2010 to Rs 117,966 crore, a compounded growth rate of 21.6 per cent. TCS also has one of the highest operating profits in the industry which hover around 26-28 per cent.
As large conglomerates globally are increasingly becoming more technology driven, they are looking at more technology driven solutions, which bodes well for TCS. “The business opportunity for us is huge, and we are well placed in terms of industry expertise, technology capabilities, customer relationships, people, and execution model to participate in this opportunity and continue to create value for all our stakeholders,” notes Gopinathan in the report.