 "TCS' outlook improving after 2 years of recessionary fears: Chandrasekaran")
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is investing in new technology and hopes to do better in financial year 2024-25 (FY25) after two years of “recessionary fears”, said N Chandrasekaran, chairman of India’s largest information technology services firm.
Artificial intelligence (AI), new energy, supply chain, and talent are “mega trends” shaping the priorities of global industries as the macro environment goes through a significant shift, he said in a letter to shareholders in the firm's annual report.
“After two years of recessionary fears, persistently high inflation, and unprecedented monetary tightening, the global macro-outlook looks relatively better now with improving growth, disinflation, and monetary easing in sight.”
Chandrasekaran said generative AI (GenAI) technologies will impact almost every sector and the country. “Enterprises have already invested in Cloud, data infrastructure, and large processing power, which will aid AI/GenAI. GenAI will not only improve productivity but also create impacts we have not previously seen or imagined.”
GenAI, new energy, data and advanced manufacturing are changing the nature of work and require new skills. A rebalancing of supply chains is underway and global energy transition and secure networks have become focus areas for businesses.
Chandrasekaran said that TCS is addressing such global shifts by investing in technology and people.
More From This Section
TCS, in FY24, consolidated its expertise in two technologies by creating an AI.Cloud unit. “In addition, each of the business groups is developing domain-specific AI/GenAI offerings relevant to the industry value chain. TCS' products and services are also being enhanced with AI capabilities. For example, TCS BaNCS is enriching its product portfolio with integrated AI/ML (machine learning) and GenAI capabilities; AI is also being embedded in cybersecurity services to enable predictive capabilities.”
More than 300,000 employees were up-skilled in GenAI technologies in FY24.
To help customers in their energy transition agenda, TCS is investing in research on green hydrogen and biofuels. It is developing digital platforms to help customers reduce greenhouse emissions. “Our proprietary ESG (environmental, social and governance ESG) framework enables enterprises to build transparency into operations and simplifies compliance reporting,” he said.
TCS is pioneering the engineering of the 5G and 6G communication stacks using open standards. Two modern laboratories for future-ready communication infrastructure and interoperability have been set up in Bengaluru and Gurugram. Investments are being made in niche technologies, such as the 5G SA core and O-RAN radios, to build solutions indigenously.
“Your company continues to invest in up-skilling its talent base of over 600,000 employees. Employees are actively leveraging experiential and personalised learning on a wide range of emerging technologies, clocking over 51 million learning hours in FY24. TCS continues to build strong talent supply chains through deep partnerships with leading educational institutions, shaping the curriculum for the new skill needs of the future,” said Chandrasekaran.
TCS in April announced FY24 revenue of Rs 240,893 crore, 6.8 per cent more than the previous year. Its order book for FY24 reached an all-time high of $42.7 billion.