N Chandrasekaran, chief executive officer and managing director of IT major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), has said that slower GDP growth, currency volatility and a slowdown in jobs would cloud growth prospects in the short term for the IT sector.
?Looking ahead to 2012-13, global macroeconomic challenges persist,? Chandrasekaran said while announcing the company?s annual report for 2011-12. ?The world is witnessing slower GDP growth as well as slower job growth across developed and emerging markets. Currency volatility continues. These issues are likely to cloud prospects in the short term.?
However, this is not a new phenomenon and global corporations recognise that they need to be nimble to adapt to changes in the environment, he said. ?Your company is strategically partnering with customers across different areas of their business to help them in this process,? he said in his note to TCS shareholders.
During a recent analysts? meet, S Mahalingam, chief financial officer at TCS, had stated that cross-currency headwinds would shave 1.5% off quarterly growth.
Meanwhile, TCS has almost doubled its $100-million customers from 8 to 14 in the 2012 fiscal, according to the annual report.
?TCS has managed to migrate many of its customers who were in the range of $20-30 million to the $100-million bracket, which is a positive development,? an analyst, who tracks the stock, said. TCS? strategy of maintaining its premium vendor positioning has helped it gain market share.
Despite the macroeconomic situation, TCS crossed the $10-billion revenue mark in the 2012 fiscal citing customer demand and sustained performance by the employees. It has added 141 new customers globally and has an active customer base of 1,076, it said.
?The company is geared up for the global shift in IT spending by corporations moving from the back-end of the business for efficiency to the front-office where it is leveraged to gain consumer/customer insights and drive growth,? Chandrasekaran said.
TCS has increased its investments in new sensor-based technologies, intelligent infra, platforms for the genomics research and information fusion for enterprises and green technologies. On Wednesday, TCS shares closed at R1,252.05, down 1.71% on the BSE.
