Mumbai: Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. believes that the Indian market, which grew 15% year-on-year in the December quarter, will be platform-driven as more businesses and govt entities digitize their processes.
Businesses in the BFSI (banking, financial services, and insurance), retail, and manufacturing sectors are adopting these solutions heavily since the launch of the India Stack— a number of application programming interfaces, or APIs, that allow organizations to connect and engage with Indian users digitally.
By positioning itself with the right apps and platforms in this space,
NSE 0.33 % expects to see traction from the government as well as corporates, as per the company’s management. India’s largest IT services firm is also bullish on “low-code, no-code” solutions, having won 24 such deals in the three months ended Dec. 31.
“As far as India is concerned, we believe that India will be a platform-driven market. They are going after digital in a big way—be it in insurance, banking, or manufacturing,” TCS COO N Ganapathy Subramaniam said during the presentation of the company’s third-quarter results on Jan. 12. “Thanks to the India stack, many of these things are happening.”
He said TCS is positioning itself to provide apps and platforms that can integrate with the India Stack and provide solutions to customers across government, industry, and even B2C. It is also investing in banking platforms and APIs for microservices that can connect to the India Stack.
TCS’ India business grew 15.2% year-on-year in October-December. This included a deal from the US-based Big Tech company, which has launched online payments and digital wallets in India and selected the QuartzBlockchain platform for handling their compliance and anti-money laundering operations. TCS HOBS, the company’s communication platform, has been adopted by a state-owned power utility in India.
“In line with the government’s Atmanirbhar initiative, we have chosen to be part of some of those big programs and are taking certain proactive long-term calls, to be part of the nation-building exercise the government is doing and hopefully our efforts in the Indian geography will play out in the long term,” Subramaniam said.
According to Gaurav Vasu, founder of research firm Unearthinsight, leading Indian IT firms have all worked towards increasing their platform offerings in India but TCS has managed to leverage it better.“TCS and Infosys both have bagged major government projects and positioned their platform offerings like BaNCs and Finacle in the India market. However, TCS has a stronghold in the government sector. In fact, its Passport Seva project was also renewed recently,” Vasu said.
During the December quarter, TCS witnessed strong traction in its product and platform portfolio. Its flagship financial services platform, TCS BaNCS, reported nine new deal wins during the quarter and five ‘go-live’ on the product. Its blockchain solution, Quartz, had three new deal wins and is being leveraged across use cases such as mobile payments, issuance of bank guarantees, internet borrowings, etc. TCS HOBS, a plug-and-play SaaS platform, had two ‘go-live’ events.
The Passport Seva project had attracted bids from TCS rivals during its renewal process but was eventually won by the Indian IT bellwether. IT services firms are also keen on participating in opportunities for low-code and no-code platform solutions, which are also in high demand in the domestic market, Vasu said, as is the case with TCS MasterKraft which recorded 24 wins during the December quarter.
