Technology to push investments globally for many more years, says TCS’ CEO

Rajesh Gopinathan, Chief Executive Officer of Tata Consultancy Services said that technology will be the primary driver of investments worldwide over the next five years and more. He expects volatility due to geopolitical conflicts and possible decoupling of the global economy to stoke demand for specific technologies.

However, Gopinathan pointed out that the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict has accelerated the need for dual trading systems and dual (business) ecosystems which will need to be kept mutually independent and technology will increasingly play a bigger role to enable such a world order.

He said, “This year the dialogue is a lot more about where the growth opportunities are, where the transformations are, that is the big shift that has happened. The theme that technology will be an increasing percentage of (business) spends is unlikely to get challenged for the next many years.”

“The digital transformation of India — both public and corporate — has been entirely executed locally and that is why we are so uniquely placed among all emerging markets. Today people are putting wrappers on that payment infrastructure and putting a brand around it. Many of the global brands are doing a much better job advertising it on TV, but the underlying rail which makes it possible is locally (built),” Gopinathan said as he called out the country’s digital payment infrastructure for special mention.

In the financial year 2022, TCS grew 15.9% on the back of record deal wins amounting to $34.6 billion for the full year with nearly a third coming in during the final quarter. From fiscal 2018 to 2022, the Mumbai-headquartered company has seen revenue expand by 30% and last September, it crossed the $200 billion mark in market capitalisation, making it second only to Accenture by this metric among global IT services companies.

“Today we have about 1,200-odd customers. When we double, we want to (have) let’s say, 2,000 or 2,500-odd customers. But we want to make sure that the level of service that we are able to provide to all of them is equal or better than where we are today,” he said.