Notwithstanding the economic pressures, IT giant TCS is setting its sights on a future in artificial intelligence. During the earnings call for the first quarter of FY24, K Krithivasan, CEO, called generative AI the “flavour of the quarter”.
With 50 pilots and research projects in the works, and over a 100 real life projects in the pipeline, discussions on AI are going strong with these enterprises, said Krithivasan.
Also read: TCS Q1 results: Recovery is not around the corner
Talent development
He announced that TCS has launched an advisory offering to help customers in creating a holistic vision, strategy and plan for enterprise adoption of generative AI. The company has also started talent development at scale in partnership with the hyperscalers, the CEO added.
“We plan to create a talent pool of over 100,000 generative AI trained associates,” Krithivasan said, adding that this will build on TCS’ capabilities in predictive AI.
Experts familiar with TCS have maintained that the company is likely to leverage AI to create low-code no-code solutions for enterprises, where generative AI will enable the IT giant to produce enterprise solutions with codes written by AI models — eliminating the need for a developer.
Also read: TCS partners Microsoft for generative AI solutions
Management commentary on macroeconomic pressures continues to be non committal. While the IT giant has a strong demand pipeline, Krithivasan said enterprises are delaying non business critical projects, which are impacting revenues. It still remains unknown whether the situation will alleviate in the second half of this financial year.
Beating street estimates, TCS saw its profits rise 16.8 per cent to ₹11,120 crore in Q1 FY24, compared with ₹9,519 crore it reported in the corresponding period last year. Margins continued to be lackluster for the second quarter in running — operating margins shrank to 23.2 per cent from 24.5 per cent reported in Q4 FY23.