The major Tata Consultancy Services is gunning for more acquisitions and mergers (M&As). The company has started looking at inorganic ways to grow faster and maintain its superiority over others, thanks to the successful acquisition of CMC Limited recently.

In order to give a major thrust, the company has recently set up a separate cell to take care of mergers and acquisitions. Two leading personalities --Mr. Mahesh Bhandari from Arthur D’Little and Mr. Debashish Poddar have joined recently to pursue vigorously, Mr. Atul Takle, Vice President, corporate communications, TCS, told The Financial Express.

“TCS believes that inorganic growth, such as mergers and acquisitions, would see the company becoming a global leader sooner than later,” Mr. Takle said. He was in Hyderabad in connection with the launch of SFMS jointly by TCS and IDRBT.

“We are looking at companies, either small or big, which will have synergy to our core business and enable TCS to leverage the strength into the market,” Mr. Takle said. “We don’t want to miss any opportunity which come across,” he added.

We are growing rapidly in Europe. We have opened a new centre in Amsterdam during last week to showcase all TCS competency in various applications and solutions with a dedicated team of 15 skilled professionals, Mr. Takle said.

“We are on track. We added over 150 clients till date in this fiscal. We are growing at over 40 per cent. We expect to cross the magic $1 billion mark in sales. And the consolidated sales (including CMC would be around Rs.5,000 crore,” he said.

On the proposed IPO, Mr. Takle said nothing concrete emerged. “We are holding the issue close to our chest. The domestic market should look up first. We don’t see it will happen in the near future. Hopefully, one would see the market revive back in the next fiscal,” he said. Despite slowdown and post-September 11 impact, TCS still remains to be the most valuable market company in India.