As Tata Consultancy Services emerges from several years of macroeconomic uncertainty, Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran indicated that new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) open frontiers of growth for the IT services firm.
Deferring to comment on whether the macro pressures will abate in the new fiscal, Chandrasekaran said at the TCS Annual General Meeting on Friday, “As we look ahead, we recognise significant mega-trends across industries globally, these trends are shaping priorities of businesses: AI, New Energy, Supply Chain, Secure Networks and Talent.”
Gen AI, Cloud
Noting that these trends open up new opportunities as well as challenges, the Chairman discussed the importance of generative AI in financial services firms, medical industry and manufacturing. Highlighting TCS’ investments in AI he said, “In FY24, TCS consolidated AI and Cloud expertise with the creation of the AI.Cloud unit. In addition, each of the business groups are developing domain specific AI/Gen AI offerings.”
He further added that TCS has upskilled nearly half their workforce or 3 lakh engineers on generative AI.
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While TCS is mostly taking on projects to onboard GenAI capabilities for companies, Chandrasekaran further noted that they have taken steps to make their own IP in the space. Even as the IT firm is not making its own large language model, TCS has created a platform to help enterprises onboard the most cost-effective LLM for their context.
He stated, “TCS has created a platform for generating front-end applications based on business requirements in natural language. To help customers in their adoption of Gen AI, TCS has built a platform that helps enterprises select the most cost effective LLM for their context.”
New energy sources
Chandrasekaran also noted that it was important to transition to new energy sources especially as generative AI is going to take a lot of energy due to its computational requirements. He said, “The Global energy transition is accelerating, and businesses are making clear commitments towards a sustainable future. The energy requirement of our fast-changing world is enormous. The current energy demand estimates do not fully take into account due to AI. The processing of large amounts of data consumes a lot of energy. The key is to lower the cost of energy while making the shift towards renewables source.”
Based on the company’s performance, the Directors have recommended a final dividend of ₹28 per share, bringing the total dividend for the year to ₹73 per share.