Organised at the TCS Banyan Park in suburban Mumbai on Friday for a presentation followed by dinner, the jamboree had a presence of around 30 analysts and investors. It was hosted by the TCS senior management and the technology team led by chief technology officer Dr Harrick Vin. The meeting was attended by the company’s chief executive K Krithivasan, chief financial officer Samir Seksaria, all presidents, unit heads and sell-side analysts.
“The executives took us through all their work, how GenAI is being used internally and externally, what they are doing around AI and latest technologies. A walk around their facilities, the work they are doing in the niche and newer areas – automotive engineering R&D (research & development), SDV, autonomous vehicle; the AI and GenAI work in the areas of logistics, supply chain, their new IPs (intellectual property) and other research-led work,” said one of the analysts present there on the condition of anonymity.
The gathering was also to celebrate the 20 years of public listing of TCS which happened on 25 August 2004. TCS shares had listed at a premium of over 26.6% at Rs 1,076 apiece on the BSE. On Monday, the stock ended at Rs 4196.10.
Another analyst said the last time TCS held such a meet was in 2016, close to the launch of its automation platform ignio, which marked the advent of digitisation and automation cycle.
TCS exhibited before the investors its AI and GenAI-enabled platforms – some live while some at proof of concept (POC) stage. The company believes that they can build new business solutions and their clients can adopt GenAI at multiple levels.
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Most projects being implemented are in the “assist or augment” category, Vin reiterated as previously said to ET in an interview in February. He said that clients are yet to have the confidence to go for “transform” projects. For now, clients have been pushing out the upgradation of legacy projects fearing the costs and the potential risks of failure.At the same time, highlighted a Nuvama report, TCS sees three key challenges holding clients back from widespread adoption of GenAI including hammer looking for a nail – clients want to adopt GenAI, but don’t know where, lack of confidence in efficacy of these models, and unpreparedness for organisational changes needed for AI models.
“We continue to view TCS as one of the biggest beneficiaries of the upcoming tech cycle,” the report added.
TCS highlighted focus on digital transformation to assist humans through automation and the paradigm shift from automation to influencing quality of outcomes. It stated to digitise and standardise what is manual and slow, infuse robotic process automation (RPA) and that the advent of GenAI scales the degree of automation.
The executives spoke of bringing all together to build AI-first business architecture and the investments needed to unlock outcomes.
In the April to June quarter earnings conference, TCS said that AI, cloud, enterprise solutions, internet of things and digital engineering (IOT & DE) as well as cybersecurity led growth in the June quarter. Its generative AI (GenAI) project pipeline doubled to $1.5 billion, up from $900 million in the March quarter.
On financials, TCS missed analyst expectations to report a 3.1% sequential drop yet 8.7% year-on-year growth in profit and revenue up both 5.4% from last year and 2.2% sequentially across all verticals, excluding telecom. It ended June with a net hiring at a seven-quarter high, indicating revival signs for FY25.
TCS did not respond to emailed request for comment.
