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Software/IT Services/Business Process Outsourcing
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is the largest Indian IT firm, with more than
110,000 employees in 47 countries and $5.7 billion in revenues for fiscal 2007–08. It is
part of the Tata Group conglomerate that spans sectors including steel, automobiles
and trucks, tea, chemicals, and luxury hotels (including Taj Hotels, which owns the Campton
Place Hotel in San Francisco).
TCS began in 1968 as the Tata Computer Centre, to provide computer services within the group.
Its first outside project was in 1974 and by 1980, TCS and another Tata firm accounted for 63%
of the $21 million Indian software export market, at the time made up of 21 firms. In 1984, TCS
set up operations in a Mumbai export processing zone.
Today, TCS has 42 North America offices, 35 of them in the U.S. Its North America workforce
totals more than 14,000. American Express, Microsoft, media research firm The AC Nielsen
Company, Roche, and General Motors are major clients. In addition to regional offices in
San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Diego and Irvine, one of the nine TCS innovation laboratories—
focusing on new media and entertainment technologies—is located in Burbank. Since 2000, TCS
has had a joint relationship with UC Riverside’s Bourns College of Engineering, funding collaborative
R&D in the area of data management, computer security and networking.
Among its Bay Area activities, TCS has:
• made available through an affiliate laboratory the EKA supercomputer in Pune—the
fourth fastest and only privately-funded supercomputer in the world—to Yahoo! Inc.
for cloud computing research;
• upgraded and integrated Agilent Technologies’ internal applications/database and
customer service functions into a consolidated, 24/7 network reaching 19,000
employees across 110 countries;
• replaced and upgraded legacy IT; centralized sales, inventory, leads and expense
functions; and expanded web-based capabilities for McGuire Real Estate, at the time (in
2002) a $1.35 billion seller of luxury real estate in the Bay Area, based in San Francisco
and employing some 2,500 people; and
• initiated a strategic alliance with Salesforce.com, using Salesforce’s AppExchange to develop
call management solutions that extend the Salesforce service and support capability.
TCS has also expanded its R&D capabilities through specialized strategic alliances with research
laboratories, startups, venture investors, large independent software vendors, and users worldwide.
These global talent clusters, which TCS calls “ecosystems,” are part of the overarching
TCS Co-Innovation Network (COIN), which has a Bay Area presence and relationships with a
wide range of small and mid-sized specialty tech firms. (More detail on COIN and its underlying
strategy is provided in the Knowledge Investment section of Chapter 7.)
In March 2008, TCS opened a $20 million delivery and software development center outside
Cincinnati aimed at winning defense, aerospace, and government contracts. Most of this work
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