TCS Sees Pandemic-Driven Boost in Europe as Clients Adopt New Technologies

Indian software company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is seeing acceleration in some parts of its business across Europe as the pandemic pushed companies to adopt new technologies more rapidly, a top executive said.

Europe has been the fastest growing region for TCS from where it gets about a third of its annual revenue of $22.17 billion (roughly Rs. 1,61,280 crores). In the last full year, continental Europe was the only geography that showed growth for TCS.

The pandemic has proven that you can collaborate remotely and certain technologies where adoptions were slow, such as collaboration technologies or cloud, the openness has increased and therefore there is an acceleration, Sapthagiri Chapalapalli, head of TCS Europe, said in an interview.

"When things open up, you also need to be cautious ... cybersecurity for example has become a very important topic because when you want to open up you need to do it in a secure way."

TCS, India's largest IT exporter, operates in 19 countries across Europe, catering to dozens of big clients such as Deutsche Bank, SAP, ASML, Infineon, and ABB.

IT service providers are seeing growth in the region as many European companies upgrade their computer technologies, coupled with a shortage of people with the required digital skills, partly because of an aging population.

"The businesses are going to fundamentally change in what they do and technology is going to sit right at the heart of that, and therefore the opportunity is huge," Chapalapalli said.

He expects TCS to operate in newer technologies like 5G which could be applied in industries like manufacturing and automotive.

It last week launched a co-innovation and advanced research centre in Amsterdam to work with clients to adopt newer technologies, and plans to make it 5G enabled in the next few months.

© Thomson Reuters 2021