2nd innovation hub in US to strengthen TCS’ BFSI play

IT major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) said during its March quarter (Q4FY22) results that the banking, finance services, and insurance (BFSI) vertical 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 areas will be growing this further. And he is banking on the firm's innovation hubs to help in this regard.

BFSI constituted 32.2 per cent of TCS' revenue in FY22, and it is the company’s largest vertical. It grew 16.7 per cent year-on-year in FY22. North America’s contribution to the revenue was 50.5 per cent for the FY22.

The first step to achieve this is hiring. Muthuswami said the company will hire more in the US, especially from 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 7,000 people in the US, and 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 has been the setting up of TCS' fourth “Pace Port” in Pittsburg, an advanced research and coinnovation centre on the Carnegie Mellon University campus. Though this is the fourth such hub across the world—tokyo, Amsterdam, New York—it is the second in the US.

The “Pace Ports” are places where the company can tap into the talents of academics, start-ups, students, and teachers, along with clients to come up with new ideas.

“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, start-ups, and our client partners. So we are bringing them all together to innovate and help our clients. This Pace Port will specialise in manufacturing, utilities, EV, Internet of Things and other such areas,” added Muthuswami.

He also added that TCS will come 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 said that clients have already started collaborating at a similar Pace Port with Cornell Tech Campus, New York.