TCS keen on expanding to tier two cities

Bangalore, July 28: IT major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), is keen on spreading its wings to tier two cities in the country and ramp up its operations.

TCS CEO and Managing Director S Ramadorai told newspersons here that TCS was looking at Hubli and Mangalore in Karnataka, Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu and Nagpur in Maharasthra. ''We have started operations recently in Kochi,'' he added.

He said for the next fiscal TCS had already completed campus recruitment in 180 colleges across the country, giving offers to 8,710 freshers. ''We will visit 300 colleges this year,'' he informed.

TCS planned a capital expenditure of Rs 1000 crore on infrastructure and Rs 300 crore on technology for the current year and ramp up manpower by over 30,000. ''The net addition will be 22,0000 taking into account the attrition rate,'' he said adding that during the first quarter of the current fiscal 7000 would be added. The total addition in manpower included 4000 to be hired in other countries. Currently TCS had 71,000 employees on its rolls.

Mr Ramadorai said the domestic IT market was looking for a major expansion over the years with the annual growth expected to be between 19 to 23 per cent as per NASSCOM reports. The major business would come from the banking sector with a number of banks going in for core banking solution, telecom companies, logistics and retail segment. Aerospace and Pharmaceutical and life sciences sectors would also chip in a sizeable opportunity, he added.

In the aeronautical sector, he hoped that the Centre would soon come out with an offset policy on Civilian Aviation purchases. While in defence sector the offset was 30 per cent, a similar offset option would be preferred for the civilian sector too. Instead of promoting commodity exports technology, other sectors could be considered, he added.

To a question, he said TCS already had a company to company tie up with Airbus and Boeing Companies and there was no offset offerings.

UNI