The Hindu Business Line : TCS sets up ninth centre

The company has taken on lease 2.40 lakh sq ft of space (over seven floors) close to the company's existing facility at Sholinganallur and plans to accommodate about 2,400 employees over a period, said a company official.

Some 1,000 professionals are expected to be located in the new centre by January 2005.

In the last couple of months, around 400 professionals with expertise in telecom and retail industries have moved into the new centre, he said.

The centre would house employees from across its practices, including telecom, banking and insurance.

This is the second major infrastructure expansion by TCS in the last 12 months.

In April last year, the company took on lease 1.5 lakh sq ft of space from SSI Ltd, a city-based IT firm, in the city. The facility has a capacity to accommodate 2,000 staff.

TCS had earlier announced that it would also invest about Rs 200 crore in a new development centre in Siruseri, also on the Old Mahabalipuram Road.

The company is in the process of getting various clearances from the State Government, said an official.

The new location is spread over 70 acres and is expected to become operational in the next two years. The centre can accommodate over 3,000 employees in the next three years, the official said.

Out of the nine locations in Chennai, the Sholinganallur centre is spread over 1,60,000 sq ft, the Tidel Park centre over 90,000 sq ft and the Ambattur facility over 80,000 sq ft.

According to Mr Phiroz Vandrevala, Executive Vice-President, once the Siruseri centre is ready, Chennai will be the biggest centre for TCS, replacing Mumbai. Currently, of the 30,000 plus employees of TCS, over 8,500 are in Chennai, he said.

Speaking to newspersons, Mr Vandrevala said that when compared to other major Indian IT players, including Infosys and Wipro, TCS had the least employee attrition rate.

For instance, in 2003-04, TCS had an employee attrition rate of 6.1 per cent compared to 8.5 per cent in Infosys and 12.8 per cent in Wipro.

`Major' client got Rs 110 cr

ON the Rs 110 crore that TCS paid its customer, General Electric (GE), in March this year, Mr Phiroz Vandrevala, Executive Vice-President, would only say that that TCS had an agreement with `a major customer' through which the transaction was executed, but refused to name the customer.

"In 2001, we entered into an agreement with a major customer by which it would provide us revenues of $500 million over three years and that if an IPO were not announced before March 2004, a sum would be paid to them."

If the IPO had been announced prior to that date, the customer would have been allotted shares.

He clarified that shares could have been allotted to the customer even at the time of the IPO announcement (which came after March 2004), but added that "TCS took a call and decided to make the payment instead".

Significantly, GE is TCS's largest customer and contributed 15.3 per cent ($241.74 million) of its consolidated revenues of approximately $1.58 billion for the year ended March 2004.