Chennai: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is planning to make Chennai the hub of its telecom practice. The company has plans to hire 1,500 people in Chennai during this financial year. A significant part of the recruitment will be for the telecom practice. The practice accounts for 20 per cent of the company’s total revenue, second only to BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance), and is a focus area for it.

According to TCS executive vice-president S Mahalingam, the company expects its telecom practice to grow by 20 to 25 per cent this year. "We are recruiting around 700 people for the telecom practice in Chennai this year, in addition to 500-600 we already have," he said. The company has over 3,500 consultants worldwide engaged in telecom projects spanning product development, implementation, maintenance, enhancements.

Early this year, the company had set-up an OSS (operations support systems) lab and NSS (Network Systems Services) at Tidel Park in Chennai at an initial investment of Rs 5 crore. The lab will be mainly utilised for developing interfaces (adapters, etc.,) and other plug-on and quick-to-install solutions, to cater to a market moving away from legacy systems to off-the-shelf solutions. Chennai has a lot of domain expertise and is strategically located in terms of disaster recovery and business continuity plans. The 5,000-strong TCS workforce in Chennai represents over 20 per cent of its total staff strength.

"The global slowdown in the telecom sector has not had any adverse impact on the company, according TCS head (telecom practice) Ravi Viswanathan. While a few clients have reduced their spending, new relationships have been developed, like the offshore development centre for Ericsson," Mr Vishwanathan said.

The company offers its services to both service providers and equipment vendors. The two categories contribute in a 60:40 ratio to its revenues. TCS has developed strategic alliances with global leaders in each segment in order to be able to offer turnkey solutions.