While many companies are complaining about the macro-economic situation and waiting for things to improve, TCS has realised that this is the new normal, a senior official said.
“With due respect to the competition, we see demand and we want to position ourselves accordingly,” Mr N. Ganapathy Subramaniam, Executive Vice-President, Tata Consultancy Services, told Business Line on the sidelines of the CII's National Quality Summit in Bangalore.
However, Mr Subramaniam said that there was cause for concern and TCS was monitoring the situation carefully because of global issues such as unemployment in the US, the sovereign debt crisis in Europe and uprisings in West Asia.
But the positive thing with all this is that companies have learnt to live with it, he said. “Companies have learnt that business has to go on. If you look at the performance of the Fortune 500 companies over the past three years, you will see that most of them have shown positive growth,” said Mr Subramaniam.
This clearly proves that there is momentum, but while there was demand, companies were cautious and spending on projects that showed growth, he pointed out. And because of this demand, TCS would maintain margins in the future too.
For the quarter ended September 30, 2011, TCS had recorded operating margins of 27 per cent and Mr Subramaniam had said that the company would maintain the momentum for the quarter ending December 31, 2011, too.
“We have stated we will grow and we will grow with industry-leading margins,” he said.
He said that it was not correct to blame economic situations like the falling rupee beyond a point because the Government, the RBI and the Finance Ministry have managed to isolate India. He instead suggested that the IT industry should manage with hedging.