TCS reported an 11 per cent rise in December quarter net profit to Rs 10,846 crore.
Dip in employee numbers
In what is a multi-year first, the company reported a marginal decline in its employee base, which had been growing steadily for a long time.
Overall staffing declined by 2,197 people to 6.13 lakh employees, making it the first quarterly decline in many years.
Reasons behind decline
The company said that the decline was not due to the demand environment and it should be seen as a case where staff is being used more efficiently.
Chief human resources officer Milind Lakkad said the decline was a result of the overall number of people leaving the company being higher than the number of new hires from campuses and laterals.
They said they will hire up to 1.25-1.50 lakh people in FY24.
Revenue growth
Its overall revenue rose 19.1 per cent to Rs 58,229 crore for the reporting quarter
Chief executive and managing director Rajesh Gopinathan attributed this growth to cloud spending by clients and assured that its clients are not affected by the overall trend of relook by companies on hyperscalers.
He further said that the firm is more confident about the North American and British operations, which account for two-thirds of its revenues.
However there are also short-term uncertainties, and it is Europe, which needs closer monitoring as geopolitical tensions keep clients from spending on IT.
Deals
Chief operating officer N Ganapathy Subramaniam said the deal momentum and pipeline are looking good.
But unlike Gopinathan he said the overall situation on technology spending seems to be intact even in this environment.
Coming to new deals, TCS reported a total contract value of USD 7.9 billion for the quarter, which Gopinathan said is in the mid-range of the target of USD 7-9 billion.
Outlook on Indian banking
The banking, financial services and insurance sector, which is the largest industry vertical for the company, has grown well and there is no major worry in the segment even though insurance has shown some softness, Subramaniam said.
He said that Indian banks are experimenting with metaverse solutions but are far away from any of it being implemented at the customer end.
Cloud, analytics and data mining and integration with services offered by startups comprise the efforts on the technological front by local banks.
