TCS planning Rs 1,300 cr capex
The Financial Express — June 30, 2006

India's largest IT exporter Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) will spend Rs 1,300 crore in capex during the current fiscal of which Rs 1,000 crore will be on real estate, chairman Ratan Tata said at the second annual general meeting (AGM) of the company on Thursday. TCS, which is nearly $ 3 billion in revenues, has said it will be hiring over 30,000 employees in the current fiscal, more than double of what it hired in the last fiscal. Tata said the firm would grow at 28%-30% in the current fiscal in line or better than the projections made by the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom).

In the first quarter, TCS has recruited 3,900 professionals and made offers to 2,800 more. The offers have been made in China, Latin America and in Eastern Europe, apart from India. Currently, about 6.5% of the company's work-force is non-Indian. TCS is also evaluating development centres at other locations in Eastern Europe, apart from the one it has in Hungary. In response to a shareholder query, Tata said employee costs of the company could go up because demand for software professionals exceeded supply.

While TCS has the lowest attrition rate among its peers, Tata said the increased offshore presence of international software firms, IBM, Accenture, EDS, General Motors and General Electric also meant job opportunities were on the rise. IBM alone employs 45,000 professionals in India, as compared to TCS' 62,000. In Mumbai, TCS will finally shift its corporate headquarters from Air India Building to the new 54,000 sq ft premises in Rallis House in January of next year. The company acquired the property at a cost of Rs 56 crore and has spent an additional Rs 35 crore on it.