Tata to another $US1.2 billion global deal

India's largest outsourcer, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), has followed another quarter of strong growth by inking a $US1.2 billion global deal with information services provider, Nielsen.

TCS Asia-Pacific head, Girija Pande, said the new deal with Nielsen - sister company to researcher ACNielsen - would play out over 10 years. TCS and Nielsen have reached an agreement in principle for the former to supply IT and operations support worldwide. It will also include certain Nielsen human resources and finance business processes, executed on new Business Process Outsourcing platforms built by TCS.

"We put together a bundle of services to present a competitive solution," Pande said. "It will be a full services play."

The news follows this week's announcement of a 45.1 per cent income surge year-on-year to $US313 million in the quarter ended September 30, on revenue of $US1.42 billion.

Fifty per cent of the quarter's revenue came from new services sales, Pande said.

TCS also reported that 12,523 more employees had joined the company in the quarter - pushing its global headcount to 104,347.

Pande said he couldn't break out TCS figures for the Australian market, but the result was in line with Asia-Pacific growth of 5.2 per cent. "[APAC] grew revenue 25.2 per cent year-on-year," he said. Australian growth was from both organic earnings and acquisitions. "We did two large deals [in the quarter], one with AGL for five years and [worth] $16 million, and one with Qantas," Pande said.

TCS Australia chief, Varun Kapur, said the service provider had 1400 staff serving Australia-based customers, some in Australia and some in India.

Australia was a key regional market for TCS but was in line with Europe and the US than other Asia-Pacific nations, such as Japan, China or South Korea, he said.

"It's a Western culture so is very different in terms of policies and systems," Kapur said.

Pande said TCS's success and status as the largest Indian outsourcer was down to the company's long history in the game, geographic reach and investment in R&D. TCS was founded in 1968 and had locations in every corner of the globe.

Kapur said TCS had a customer return rate of almost 95 per cent. "We are very, very delivery-focused. We promise what we deliver and we deliver what we promise," Kapur added.