Second innovation hub in US to strengthen TCS lead position in market

Firm hires over 7,000 in the US in FY22; numbers may go up in FY23

IT major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), in its Q4FY22 results, said the company’s banking, finance services and insurance (BFSI) crossed the $10 billion milestone. This includes revenue from financial products, services and platforms. For Suresh Muthuswami, who recently took over as Chairman of North America, one of the focus will be to grow this percentage going ahead.

The first step to grow the US market is hiring. Muthuswami said that the company will be hiring more in the US, especially from the campuses. In FY22 TCS hired over 7,000 people in the US and going ahead too the numbers will be similar.

“Last year, we hired somewhere north of 7000 people in the US, I expect those kinds of numbers to continue. Given that we are still in a strong demand environment. We've said this before also in the IT services industry, we are among the top two recruiters in the US so we are very strong in hiring people and we will invest more in the US. There's a lot of opportunities,” said Muthuswami.

The other significant step towards growing this market has been the setting up of TCS’ fourth Pace Port in Pittsburg, an advanced research and co-innovation center at the Carnegie Mellon University campus. Though this is the fourth such hub across the world—Tokyo, Amsterdam, New York—this is the second hub in the US.

The Pace Ports or co-innovation hubs set up by the company are places where the company can tap into the talents of academics, startups, students and teachers, along with clients to come up with new ideas and innovation.

“The idea of Pace Ports is all about innovation, where no one individual or one company can have all the ideas and can innovate, you need an ecosystem of partners, academic institutions, startups, and our client partners. So we are bringing them all together to innovate and help our clients. This Pace Port will specialize in manufacturing, utilities, EV, Internet of Things and other such areas,” added Muthuswami.

He also added that going ahead TCS will be coming up with more such hubs across the US as well as other geographies. “It’s been just a few weeks since I took over the role. My focus will be to make this investment work for us and our clients. We will be investing more in creating such hubs of innovation going ahead,” he added.

Muthuswami also added how clients have already started collaborating at a similar Pace Port with Cornell Tech Campus, New York.

In terms of his focus going ahead Muthuswami stated that he would want to see how the North America geography further grows in the company’s revenue contribution either by deepening the existing client relationship as well as capturing new demand.

“If I look at client spending they are all spending on improving customer experience, digital, moving to the cloud, security and design thinking. Those are the areas clients are spending money, they want to also reduce complexity by getting out of all the older technologies and the focus on data and digital. Along with this we are focusing on building the right talent in the geography, investing in communities and developing stronger partnerships with our clients as well,” he added.

Growing the North America market is significant for the company not only because it’s the largest in terms of market size, but with Europe facing challenges in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and inflation may grow a tad slower. During the fourth quarter results the management did agree that clients in Europe may step back but that does not mean they are stepping down.

BFSI for TCS for FY22 constitutes 32.2 per cent of its revenue and which is the largest vertical for the company, grew 16.7 per cent year-on-year for FY22. North America’s contribution to the revenue was 50.5 per cent for the FY22.