Gateway Chile
Business World — June 27, 2006

As Big Blue gets set to pump megabucks into India, Mumbai-based Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has been busy painting foreign markets its own shade of blue. Last week, it signed two outsourcing contracts in Chile, together worth $30 million. Under one, it will manage the IT and BPO operations of Transantiago, the public transport system planned for Santiago. In the second, which is a five-year contract with a global bank and financial group, TCS will manage its loan and credit back office in Chile. Both deals come shortly after TCS bought Chilean BPO firm Comicrom for $23 million in November 2005.

Chile is key to TCS' $50-million Latin American operations. The continent in TCS' focus from 2002, both as a market and as a delivery base for global clients. Over the last 12 months, TCS has aggressively ramped up in the region — from 648 people in March 2006 to 2,500 now. They man the company's seven delivery centres in Uruguay, Brazil and Chile. By the end of March 2007, expects N. Chandrasekaran, vice-president (global head, sales & operations), TCS, the headcount would hit 3,500 and revenues $100 million at least.

Chandrasekaran also has also kept an eye on the gaps in TCS' overall global delivery footprint. "We need more centres in Europe, especially for business process outsourcing," he says. TCS has 400 people in Eastern Europe, but that apart it is also exploring new delivery bases in the Asia-Pacific. Now, the challenge for TCS is not the expansion, but distributing management time across the network.