Europe continues to be in the throes of a severe debt crisis, but that doesn’t seem to be a deterrent for Indian IT biggies seeking a wider footprint in the market.
TCS, India’s largest IT solutions player, appears to have a headstart here.
For the record, Europe accounts for around 26% of the total revenues of TCS.
N Chandrasekaran, CEO, TCS, has reason to be upbeat. “The company is seeing deal closures in Europe, which essentially means there will be good growth in coming quarters,” he had said during the third quarter results announcement on Wednesday.
Just what has paid off for TCS? “As a company, TCS has always been more open to emerging economies. It has been active in Europe, especially Germany and France, much before other Indian vendors. Hence, when other players are in the process of expanding their footprint in these economies, TCS already has a good presence and therefore, it enjoys an edge over others,” said an analyst , requesting anonymity.
The company is also quite flexible with its delivery process, Aniruddha Bhosale, research analyst, Deutsche Bank, noted in a report. “TCS has a very strong sales focus with good business propositions. There is also high CEO-level engagement involved.”
But most importantly, TCS comes off as the lowest cost vendor for customers, making the job easier for it to win more volume share with low risks to existing billing rates. But others are fast catching up, Infosys for one.
“Infosys is extremely conservative in nature. They like to work with companies which are reputed and in the process, lose business with small customers which are capable of handing long-term projects,” said an expert. Realising this, the company has of late been making efforts to connect with top-level executives and is best positioned to move up the value chain.
Wipro, too, poses a challenge unless TCS goes beyond traditional service offerings like application development to more business in continental Europe.
“Under the leadership of TK Kurein, the vertical-focussed organisation is now taking positive steps to consolidate business with existing customers. More than continental Europe, Wipro stands to gain big-time from its presence in the Middle-East. It is making all positive organisational changes to win more clients,” said experts.
Even HCL has sound credentials, though it is still not viewed as a tier-1 vendor for services other than infrastructure management services.
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