New Technology

India's largest outsourcing firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) said that it will relocate staff abroad into India."The company follows an onsite-offshore model. We will focus to do more work in India because it helps in saving cost and efficiency," TCS Chief Operating Officer N Chandrasekaran said.

However, the company would continue to do work onshore and relocation did not mean that it was winding up its operations abroad.The company, which tried out its relocation in January-March this year, gained significantly in the last quarter of 2008-09.

In Q4, the company brought back its US staff to India resulting in a cost saving of Rs 121 crore. The company did not give any figures on how many staff were brought back.The relocation of staff could be in thousands, he said.

Infosys outperformed its peers both on the front of revenue and profit growth in the fourth quarter of 2008-09. Revenue and profit grew by 25 and 33 per cent, respectively.

Amidst a depreciating rupee, IT companies have seen a rise in revenues and profits for the quarter and year ended March 2009. The combined revenue growth of the top four - TCS, Wipro, Infosys, and HCL Technologies - was 15 per cent for the quarter ended March 2009.

The cumulative profit for the four companies stood at Rs 3,840 crore for the said quarter, a gain of 13.6 per cent over the same period last year. The primary contributors to the growth were Infosys and Wipro.

TCS too posted gains. HCL technologies, however, witnessed a 17 per cent drop in revenue.

Its foreign exchange loss stood at Rs 201 crore. "Infosys has the lowest hedge, it is good on delivery, performance, it reads the market well and outperforms its guidance.

All these make me go bullish on the company among the lot," said Anil Advani, head of research, SBI Capital Securities. HCL's performance has typically lagged that of the remaining three, "HCL has never been a great performer but with the Axon acquisition, people are looking at it in a more positive manner," said an IT analyst who did not wish to be named.

On an annual performance basis, while Wipro gained 44 per cent in its revenues, Infosys emerged as the maximum gainer in profits with a 30 per cent growth in profit during 2008-09 against that recorded in 2007-08.