Tata Consultancy Services

From The invisible Empire

Tata Consultancy Services
TypePublic
Traded as
ISININE467B01029
IndustryInformation technology
Consulting
Outsourcing
Founded1968; 57 years ago (1968)
FounderJ. R. D. Tata
HeadquartersMumbai, India
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Natarajan Chandrasekaran
(Chairman)
K. Krithivasan
(CEO)
RevenueIncrease 245,315 crore (US$29 billion) (2024)
Operating income
Increase 61,997 crore (US$7.4 billion) (2024)
Net income
Increase 46,099 crore (US$5.5 billion) (2024)
Total assetsIncrease 146,449 crore (US$18 billion) (2024)
Total equityIncrease 91,319 crore (US$11 billion) (2024)
Number of employees
601,546 (March 2024)
ParentTata Group
Subsidiaries
  • TRDDC
Websitewww.tcs.com

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is an Indian multinational information technology (IT) services and consulting company headquartered in Mumbai. It is a part of the Tata Group and operates in 150 locations across 46 countries. In March 2024, TCS reported that it had 601,546 employees worldwide. TCS is the second-largest Indian company by market capitalization, the most valuable IT service brands worldwide, and the top Big Tech (India) company. In 2012, it was the world's second-largest user of U.S. H-1B visas.

As of 2021, it was ranked seventh on the Fortune India 500 list. In September 2021, TCS recorded a market capitalization of US$200 billion, making it the first Indian IT tech company to do so. In 2016–2017, parent company Tata Sons owned 72.05% of TCS and more than 70% of Tata Sons' dividends were generated by TCS.

History

1968–2005

Tata Consultancy Services Limited, initially started as Tata Computer Systems, was founded in 1968 by a division of Tata Sons Limited. Its early contracts included punched card services to sister company TISCO (now Tata Steel), working on an Inter-Branch Reconciliation System for the Central Bank of India, and providing bureau services to Unit Trust of India.

In 1975, TCS delivered an electronic depository and trading system called SECOM for Swiss company SIS SegaInterSettle; it also developed System X for the Canadian Depository System and automated the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. TCS associated with a Swiss partner, TKS Teknosoft, which it later acquired.

In 1980, TCS established India's first dedicated software research and development center, the Tata Research Development and Design Centre (TRDDC) in Pune. In 1981, it established India's first client-dedicated offshore development centre, set up for clients Tandem.

In anticipation of the Y2K bug and the launch of a unified European currency (Euro), Tata Consultancy Services created the factory model for Y2K conversion and developed software tools which automated the conversion process and enabled third-party developer and client implementation. Towards the end of 1999, TCS decided to offer Decision Support System (DSS) in the domestic market under its Corporate Vice President and Transformation Head Subbu Iyer. The company also registered its first tagline "Beyond the Obvious" in 1999.

2005 to 2016

On 25 August 2004, TCS became a publicly listed company.

In 2005, TCS became the first India-based IT services company to enter the bioinformatics market, and in the same year TCS changed the tagline from "Beyond the Obvious" to "Experience Certainty". In 2006, it designed an ERP system for the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation. By 2008, its e-business activities were generating over US$500 million in annual revenues.

TCS entered the small and medium enterprises market for the first time in 2011, with cloud-based offerings. On the last trading day of 2011, it overtook RIL to achieve the highest market capitalization of any India-based company. In the 2011–12 fiscal year, TCS achieved annual revenues of over US$10 billion for the first time.

In May 2013, TCS was awarded a six-year contract worth over 11 billion (US$130 million) to provide services to the Indian Department of Posts. In 2013, the firm moved from 13th position to 10th position in the League of top 10 global IT services companies and in July 2014, it became the first Indian company with over 5 trillion (equivalent to Formatting error: invalid input when rounding or US$Formatting error: invalid input when rounding in 2023) market capitalization.

In January 2015, TCS ended Reliance Industries Limited's 23-year run as India's most profitable firm.

2017 to 2023

In January 2017, the company announced a partnership with Aurus, a payments technology company, to deliver payment solutions for retailers using TCS OmniStore, a first-of-its-kind unified store commerce platform. In the same year, TCS China was associated as a joint venture with the Chinese government.

In March 2018, Tata Sons sold stocks of TCS worth $1.25 billion in a bulk deal.

TCS received the 2019 American Business Awards from Four Stevies.

On 8 October 2020, TCS surpassed Accenture in market capitalization to become the world's most valuable IT company with a market capitalization of $144.73 billion. On 25 January 2021, TCS again surpassed Accenture briefly in market capitalization to become the world's most-valuable IT company with a market cap of $170 billion. The same day, TCS became India's most valuable company, surpassing Reliance Industries with a market capitalization of 12.55 trillion (equivalent to Formatting error: invalid input when rounding or US$Formatting error: invalid input when rounding in 2023). In 2021 Tata was also one of the largest job providers in India, hiring 43,000 individuals in H1 FY22. In October 2021, N Ganapathy Subramaniam, the COO of TCS, stated that its platforms and products business is worth approximately $3 billion. Also, in 2021 TCS got a millennial makeover. Under the leadership of Rajashree R, TCS Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), the company changed the tagline from "Experience Certainty" to "Building on Belief".

In May 2021, alongside consortium partner Neurotechnology, TCS was selected by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to provide biometric technology for the Aadhaar digital ID program.

Services

  • Cloud
  • Cognitive Business Operations
  • Consulting
  • Cybersecurity

Acquisitions

Name Acquisition date Activities Country of HQ Price Employees
(at acquisition)
Description Sources
CMC Limited October 2001 IT Services India $33.9m 3,102 Gets embedded expertise & good domestic customer reach. CMC amalgamated with TCS on 28 April 2015.
Airline Financial Support Services India (AFSI) January 2004 BPO India $5.1m 400 BPO expertise in Airline and Hospitality sector.
Aviation Software Development Consultancy India (ASDC) March 2004 IT Services India $3.1m 180
Phoenix Global Solutions May 2004 Business Process Outsourcing India $130m 400 Acquire expertise in insurance-domain consulting.
Swedish Indian IT Resources AB (SITAR) May 2005 IT Services Sweden $4.8m n/a Acquire blue-chip European customers like Ericsson, IKEA, Vattenfall, and Hutchison; SITAR was TCS’ exclusive partner in Sweden and a non-exclusive partner in Norway.
Pearl Group October 2005 Insurance United Kingdom $94.7m 950 Acquired life and pension outsourcing business from Pearl Group; domain knowledge of life and pension underwriting business.
Financial Network Services (FNS) October 2005 Core Banking Product Australia $26m 190 TCS acquired core banking solution product (BANCS) and access to 116 customers in 35 countries; FNS was an existing partner for TCS.
Comicrom November 2005 Banking BPO Chile $23m 1,257 Entry into Latin America; access to payment processing platform.
Tata Infotech February 2006 IT Services India $259.2m 3,600 The merger of Tata Infotech added 15 new Fortune 500 clients.
TCS Management November 2006 IT Services Australia $13m 35 Access to Australian clients.
TKS-Teknosoft November 2006 Banking Product Chile $80.4m 115 Expand product portfolio by acquiring rights to Quartz and ownership of Alpha and e-portfolio, enhanced presence in Switzerland and France.
Citigroup Global Services Limited December 2008 Captive BPO of Citigroup Inc. India $512m 12,472 TCS acquired key Banking and Financial Services (BFS) domain knowledge.
Supervalu Services India September 2010 Captive IT/BPO unit of Supervalu Inc. in India India $100m 600 TCS had a deal with Supervalu to have their software outsourcing to TCS and acquired Supervalu India.
Computational Research Laboratories August 2012 High Performance Computing India $34m 80 Acquire expertise in High Performance Computing (HPC) applications and Cloud services.
Alti SA April 2013 IT Services France $97.5m 1200 Access to blue-chip French and European clients in banking, luxury, manufacturing, and utility sectors.
BridgePoint Group November 2018 Management consulting United States Acquire expertise in US retirement services.
Postbank Systems November 2020 IT Services Germany Acquire expertise in the Banking and Financial Services (BFS) domain. Deutsche Bank restructures itself and sold its IT-subsidiary to TCS, which had already been their partner in IT services.
Pramerica Systems Ireland December 2020 IT Services Ireland 1500 Prudential Financial sold its Irish subsidiary to TCS. Acquires expertise in the Banking and Financial Services (BFS) domain and established Global delivery center in Ireland.

Operations

As of September 2023, TCS had a total of 51 subsidiary companies and operated in 55 countries.

Locations

TCS has operations in the following locations:

India:

Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Baroda, Bhubaneswar, Chennai, Coimbatore ,Delhi, Gandhinagar, Goa, Gurugram, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam,Bhopal, Indore, Jamshedpur, Kalyan, Thane, Kochi, Kolkata, Lucknow, New Delhi, Mumbai, Nagpur, Noida, Nashik, Patna, Pune, Thiruvananthapuram, and Varanasi.

Asia (excluding India):

Bahrain, China, Israel, UAE, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Qatar.

Oceania:

Australia

Africa:

South Africa, Morocco (closed)

Europe:

Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Republic of Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

North America:

Canada, Mexico, and the United States.

South America:

Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Uruguay.

TCS BPS

TCS BPS (Business Process Services) is the third-largest India-based IT outsourcing company (after Capgemini). The BPS division had revenues of US$1.44 billion in FY 2012–13, which was 12.5% of the total revenue of TCS. TCS BPS has more than 45,000 employees who serve over 225 million customers across 11 countries. The rate of attrition in the BPS division during the financial year 2012–13 was 19.5%. The firm has also opened a business process outsourcing facility in the Philippines.

Life Sciences and Healthcare

Since 2006 TCS signed multi million contracts from american biopharma giants Pfizer, Eli Lilly etc for providing clinical research-data management, biostatistics, and medical writing services. TCS also provides services to european biopharma giants such as Roche, Novartis etc in the areas of clinical data management, biostatistics, clinical programming, pharmacovigilance, and RWE support towards global drug development efforts.

Tata Research Development and Design Centre

TCS established India's first software research centre, the Tata Research Development and Design Centre, in Pune, in 1981. TRDDC undertakes research in software engineering, process engineering, bioinformatics, and systems research. Researchers at TRDDC also developed MasterCraft (now a suite of digitization and optimization tools), a Model-driven Development software that can automatically create codes based on a model of a software, and rewrite the codes based on the users' needs. The research at TRDDC has also resulted in the development of Sujal, a low-cost water purifier, that can be manufactured using locally available resources. TCS deployed thousands of these filters in the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster of 2004 as part of its relief activities. This product has been marketed in India as Tata Swach, a low-cost water purifier.

Innovation labs

Tata Innovation Center at Cornell Tech campus in New York City

In 2007, TCS launched its co-innovation network, a network of innovation labs, start-up alliances, university research departments, and venture capitalists. In addition, TCS has 19 innovation labs based in three countries. TCS' partners include Collabnet and Cassatt, and academic institutions such as IITs, Stanford, MIT, and Carnegie Mellon, and venture capitalists like Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins.

Employees

TCS is one of the largest private-sector employers in India, The employee costs for the FY 2012–13 were US$4.38 billion, which was approx. 38% of the total revenue of the company for that period. In the same period, the rate of attrition was 10.6%. The average age of a TCS employee is 28 years. The employee utilization rate, excluding trainees, for the FY 2012–13 was 82%. TCS was the fifth-largest United States visa recipient in 2008 (after Infosys, CTS, Wipro, and Mahindra Satyam). In 2012, the Tata Group companies, including TCS, were the second-largest recipient of H-1B visas.

Subramaniam Ramadorai, the former CEO of TCS, has authored an autobiographical book about his experiences in the company called The TCS Story...and Beyond.

Former CEOs of TCS

  • F. C. Kohli, co-founder and first CEO and MD of TCS from 1968 to 1996, known as "Father of Indian IT Industry"
  • Subramaniam Ramadorai, CEO and MD of TCS from 1996 to 2009, and Vice - Chairman till 6 October 2014
  • Natarajan Chandrasekaran, COO, Executive Director, and CEO of TCS from 2009 to 2017
  • Rajesh Gopinathan,CEO and MD of TCS from 2017 to May 2023
  • K. Krithivasan, CEO and MD of TCS from June 1 2023

Sponsorships

TCS is the title sponsor for Toronto Waterfront Marathon, London Marathon, Amsterdam Marathon, Mumbai Marathon, Lidingöloppet, and New York City Marathon and one of the sponsors of City2Surf, Australian Running Festival, Berlin Marathon, Chicago Marathon, and Boston Marathon. In India, it is the title sponsor of World 10K held in Bangalore every year. TCS has been a sponsor of the Indian Premier League team Rajasthan Royals since 2009. It also provides the team with technology to help in the analysis of player performance, simulation, and use of RFID tags for tracking the players’ fitness levels and for security purposes in the stadiums. TCS sponsors an annual IT quiz for high school students called TCS IT Wiz. TCS IT Wiz is the largest quiz in India, attracting students who are studying between class 8 and class 12. This quiz is hosted by Giri Balasubramanium.

TCS also currently sponsors Jaguar Racing in Formula E and Nakajima Racing in Super Formula.

Controversies

On 14 February 2006, US law firm Lieff Cabraser filed a nationwide class action lawsuit against Tata. In July 2013, judge Claudia Wilken of the US District Court, Northern District of California in Oakland, California, granted final approval to the settlement of the lawsuit on behalf of all non-US citizens employed by TCS within the state of California from 14 February 2002 to 30 June 2005. The workers claimed that they were forced to sign over their federal and state tax refunds to their employer, as well as stating their Indian salaries were wrongfully deducted from their US pay.

On 22 February 2013, the company agreed to settle for a sum of 1.62 billion (equivalent to Formatting error: invalid input when rounding or US$Formatting error: invalid input when rounding in 2023), this class-action suit filed in a United States court on payment to employees on deputation.

A US grand jury has slapped two companies of India's Tata Group – Tata Consultancy Services and Tata America International Corp – with a US$940 million fine in a trade secret lawsuit filed against them. Epic Systems had accused TCS and Tata America International Corp, in a lawsuit filed in October 2014 in US District Court in Madison, which was amended in January and December 2015, of "brazenly stealing the trade secrets, confidential information, documents and data" belonging to Epic. This Epic Systems lawsuit against TCS was completed in November 2023 with TCS agreeing to pay US$125M.

In 2019, an employee filed a complaint with the Kancheepuram labour court alleging that Tata Consultancy Services' internal complaints committee mishandled a sexual harassment case, and the case was approved. Over four years later the worker's case has not progressed, with the worker accusing the company of holding up investigations. Over the years she has also reported unexplained transfers and other alleged workplace retribution, including in performance reviews.

On 20 October 2023, Tata failed to deliver digital exams to candidates applying to the University of Oxford. Some sources state that due to inadequate preparation, a technical glitch caused the exams to be delayed by more than 2 hours, and even completely cancelled in some cases.

See also

  • List of IT consulting firms
  • List of public listed software companies of India
  • Software industry in Telangana
  • Information technology in India
  • List of Indian IT companies

External links

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