Dip in rupee not a definitive trend: TCS

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on Monday said rupee depreciation cannot be called a definitive trend. An “exchange risk is something we have to bear” it said. Also, the Mumbai-headquartered IT solutions company said it had yet to sense a major slowdown, even as it is keenly monitoring the current global situation.

Revealing these, TCS executive director and chief financial officer S Mahalingam noted on Monday that his firm had contracts with companies, and not with the countries. “Therefore, many of the companies we contract with are multinationals having operations right across the globe. They, too, have realised that they have to go for automation and so on to be competitive,” he told reporters here. “So far, we have not seen any major slowdown in new businesses and orders”.

However, the company is waiting for the budget from the companies.

“That will let us know if there is a change in spending patterns,” Mahalingam added.

Commenting on volatility, he said it was capital inflows that were causing the current volatility -- and that the fundamentals have not changed. “We have to continuously watch them (inflows),” he said. “For, there are many developments taking place that needs a very close watch. The health of large undertakings in the financial space is among the things we will continue to watch for.”

As for hiring, Mahalingam said the current growth led the 1968-founded company to determine it.

“We have to satisfy the current growth. Therefore, we are not recruiting for bench -- at least I can talk about my company. We are essentially recruiting for our current demand,” he added. “Therefore, when we announced 6,000 (personnel), we essentially took into the account the likely demand that is going to come in. As of now, we are not seeing any change in the stand we had taken.”