Rising traction of tech platforms, says TCS

Over past few years, eight platforms have together generated over $500 mn in annual revenue: N Chandrasekaran

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the country's largest information technology (IT) services provider, said its platform or non-linear initiatives have generated $500 million in annual revenue.

N Chandrasekaran, managing director and chief executive officer, while addressing Morgan Stanley's Annual India Summit, said: "We have seized the opportunity and over the past few years, built and launched several cloud platforms that are now slowly finding market acceptance. These eight platforms together generated over $500 million in annual revenue."

This is the first time TCS has disclosed the revenue from these platforms. During the fourth quarter results, the company did share a revenue figure of $125 million but for only its cloud platforms built in-house.

Chandrasekaran went on to say the definition of services was itself expanding, due to the disruption from cloud computing. "It has fundamentally altered the consumption of software, moving from a capex-heavy, licence-based owned model to a capex-free, shared model based on pay per use subscription fees," he added.

The entire 'as a service’ model, whether Software-as-a-Service or Process-as-a-Service, levels the playing field by moving the technology provision into the realm of services and opens entirely new market segments.

These include TCS' Financial Inclusion platform that powers about 12,000 branches of all those small and remote bank branches that are now spearheading the government of India’s financial inclusion mandate.

Chandrasekaran also stated the company had already embarked on the path of automation and reaping benefits, too. Though the impact was not easily seen on a quarterly basis, it can be seen on an annual basis, he added.

"If we step back and look at our numbers over a five-year period, the productivity gains are clearly visible. In FY10, we had revenue of $6.3 billion, with a headcount of 160,000. In FY15, we doubled the headcount to 320,000 but the revenue did not just double. We generated revenue of $15.5 billion, representing a productivity gain of nearly $3 billion," he said.

With this, the company is ready to go one step up in automation, by taking advantage of the changed economics of artificial intelligence and machine learning. For this, the company last week launched a new product, Ignio, that builds on the comprehensive body of automation TCS has built up over the years, covering different technologies.

He also rubbished all the talk that the IT industry model was on its way out. "It never ceases to amuse me how at every turn in these two decades, every time there has been a technology change, there have been similar dire predictions. And, yet, at every point, we transformed, we retrained, reskilled and reoriented ourselves. Most important, we innovated all along, finding more and more efficient means to deliver superior outcomes on every new technology," he added.