TCS SEEN FRONT RUNNER FOR $3.5-BN UK RAIL CONTRACT
HCL, Wipro also likely to bid for UK’s biggest information technology tender
Indian majors are preparing to bid for the biggest-ever information technology management contract in Britain, valued around $3.5 billion. A multi-year contract, to be decided in 2019, it is to be floated by Network Rail, a state-owned entity. According to multiple sources, Tat a Consultancy Services has an edge over others—it has had along relationship with Network Rail and has a large presence in Britain and the restofEurope.
Indian majors are preparing to bid for the biggest-ever information technology (IT) management contract in Britain, valued around $3.5 billion (nearly ~250 billion ).
A multi-year one, to be decided in 2019, it is to be floated by Network Rail, a stateowned entity which manages that country’s railway network.
According to multiple sources, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has an edge over others — it has had a long relationship with Network Rail and has a large presence in Britain and the rest of Europe. The Mumbai-headquartered firm has been working with Network Rail for five years, managing its IT infrastructure.
Noida-headquartered HCL Technologies and Bengaluru-based Wipro, both considered strong in infrastructure management services (IMS), are also likely to bid, the sources add. Emails sent to all three companies were not answered.
In 2013, TCS was among five vendors, including Cognizant and Accenture, to bag a contract from Network Rail for designing, building and managing its IT infrastructure. Though the deal size was not revealed, sources estimated it around $400 million.
Network Rail is owner and operator of Britain’s railway infrastructure — tracks, signals, tunnels, bridges, level crossings, and stations, among others. “This contract is one of the biggest in IT outsourcing, at a time when deal values are increasingly become smaller,” said another source.
TCS has been operating in the European region for a little over 30 years; it has also invested heavily in this continent over the past decade or so. Currently, it is present in around 21 nations there, with at least 15,000 employees, including in Britain, France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Clients include ABN Amro, Bekaert, British Airways, BT, Europcar, Ferrari, ING, KLM, Nokia, OECD, and Societe Generale.
Over the past year, the company has won several multi-million dollar deals in America. In January this year, it won a deal worth $690 million from M&G Prudential, the European business arm of Prudential, to digitally transform their businesses. In December last year, TCS renewed a $2.25billion contract from UK-based television ratings measurement company Nielsen.
And, in September last year, TCS subsidiary Diligenta clinched a $1-billion contract from Scottish Widows, an arm of Lloyds Banking Group’s life and pensions business.
The growth momentum in Europe was also reflected in the company’s first quarter earnings this financial year, when the UK and continental Europe showed 18 per cent growth in revenue, as compared to a 7 per cent rise in North America.