BACK

Tata Consultancy Services has become the first Indian information technology services company to cross the 100,000 employee mark, underlining the rapid growth of the country’s outsourcing industry. But the news came as TCS reported its slowest quarter-on-quarter profit growth rate in seven quarters in the three months to the end of September, as the industry fights an appreciation in the rupee against the dollar. “We crossed the magic number of 100,000 employees, which is a landmark,” S. Ramadorai, TCS chief executive, said on Monday. India’s IT industry is rapidly expanding its headcount to keep pace with soaring orders from its clients in the US, Europe and other markets, in spite of a growing shortage of suitable talent coming out of the country’s universities. TCS, which is India’s largest computer services company and largest private sector employer, added 12,523 employees during the second quarter of its fiscal year ending next March, bringing its total to 104,325. Employee attrition during the quarter was 11.5 per cent. To help overcome a shortage of suitable engineering graduates, the company has begun training recruits from other academic disciplines.