India's top IT companies have shown a hiatus between their performance on the bourses in the pandemic period and earnings growth. The combined market cap of the top five IT companies - Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Wipro, HCL Technologies, and Tech Mahindra - is up 87 per cent since the end of March 2020. In comparison, the benchmark BSE Sensex is up 68 per cent during the period. So the industry beat the broader market by a big margin in the last one year.
The strict curbs, including a curfew from 8 pm till 7 am, and prohibitory orders during the daytime on weekdays came into force from Monday in the state.
To cement India's position as a preferred global outsourcing destination, the government on Wednesday liberalised guidelines for voice-based BPOs removing the distinction between domestic and international units as well as permitting interconnectivity between all types of OSP centres. Broadly, the rules would allow global companies, say an airline, with a voice-based centre in India to now serve global and domestic customers with common telecom resources, something that required dedicated, separate infrastructure previously. Moreover, the restrictions on data interconnectivity between any BPO (business process outsourcing) centre of the same company, a group company or any unrelated company has been done away with, allowing for massive flexibility in resource management for BPO operations.
A majority of the companies said the law, aimed at jobs with a monthly salary cap of Rs 50,000, will result in them leaving Haryana or growing their operations in other states and abroad.
Already 15-20 per cent of the workforce, earlier used to be procured from staffing firms and subcontractors, are replaced by freelancers tapped from platforms like Topcoder, GitHub, and Upwork.
With the economy gaining pace and large deals back on the table, chief executive officers (CEOs) of tech companies believe global tech spending will witness growth this year. According to CEO Survey by Nasscom, about 71 per cent chief executives expect global spend to grow over 4 per cent. The figure is significantly higher than the previous two years - 41 per cent and 59 per cent in 2019 and 2020, respectively. The survey also said the recovery in global tech spending will be led by the digital segment.
Among IT services firm, Cognizant witnessed over 60 per cent of its initial applications rejected, followed by Capgemini, Accenture, Wipro, and Infosys. In 2018, the top six Indian firms got just 16 per cent or 2,145 H1B work permits.
India's second-largest IT services company Infosys on Wednesday said its consolidated net profit grew by 20.5 per cent to Rs 4,845 crore for the September quarter, and it has raised revenue forecast to 2-3 per cent for FY21. Infosys had clocked a net profit of Rs 4,019 crore in the same period last fiscal, Infosys said in a regulatory filing.
As a venture partner, DVP said that Neemuchwala would be bringing deep technology expertise and invaluable experience of building businesses.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray announced a statewide curfew for 15 days from 8 am on April 14 to contain the rapid spread of the coronavirus in its second wave. With Section 144 being imposed across the state, Thackeray essential services have been exempted from the restrictions. The curfew will be in place till 7 am on May 1.
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Google's email service, Gmail, is facing a disruption in service since Thursday morning, affecting some users in various parts of the world.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Friday announced setting up of its second data centre region in India in Telangana that will be operational by mid-2022, and will see the tech giant investing about Rs 20,761 crore. While AWS did not comment on the investment detail, Telangana IT and Industries Minister KT Rama Rao tweeted that AWS will invest Rs 20,761 crore ($2.77 billion) to set up multiple data centres in the state.
According to a source at Bytedance, the company held a town hall on Wednesday where it communicated news about the closure of India business to its employees.
Earnings growth in the early-bird sample has been driven by banks and iron & steel companies.
The data was not available for a couple of days and it created panic in the public, mostly among the people excluded from the list as the rejection certificates were yet to be issued.
India's largest IT services firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on Wednesday said its shareholders have approved its up to Rs 16,000 crore share buyback plan. Last month, TCS' board of directors had approved a proposal to buy back up to 5,33,33,333 equity shares of the company at Rs 3,000 per scrip for an aggregate amount not exceeding Rs 16,000 crore. "....the members of the company have duly passed the special resolution approving the Buyback," TCS said in a regulatory filing on Wednesday. The voting, which started on October 20 and ended on November 18, saw 99.57 per cent of the votes being cast in favour of the buyback offer.
TCS has been Three UK's partner for 15 years, working with a variety of business units and has been instrumental in supporting the company's ambition of becoming the world's first telco to host all its applications entirely on the public cloud.
According to outsourcing advisors and experts, while almost half of the deals are likely to see delay, the others are expected to be renewed at a lower price as enterprises ask for discounts in roll-over contracts.
Currently, Deloitte, EY and KPMG with their associates work as statutory auditors of most of the top league domestic IT services firms. Owing to many alleged auditing lapses, the regulators have either imposed restrictions on the audit firms or are seeking to do so.
To land a job in a competitive field, graduates must go beyond the obvious and prepare extensively, adbises Vijay Gupta, director-global human resources, Rahi Sytems, a global IT services and solutions company.
WhatsApp will not delete any account for not accepting its new privacy update, but users not agreeing to the controversial terms after "several weeks" will not be able to access their chat list, and eventually, will not be able to answer incoming phone or video calls over the app.
Its revenue grew 8.5 per cent to Rs 23,665 crore in the quarter under review from Rs 21,803 crore in the corresponding period last fiscal.
As enterprises halt ongoing projects or cancel them, all staffers working on such projects are placed on the bench. In some cases, IT firms have to reduce billable staffers in a project as clients ask for scaling down support, leading to rise in reserved employees.
Its order also includes a direction for the channel to broadcast a statement of Ofcom's findings on a date and in a form to be determined by the watchdog and also for KTV not to repeat the music video or the discussion programme found in breach of its rules.
The ministry has taken a strong position on the matter, and made it clear that it is not just problematic but also "irresponsible" for the messaging platform to leverage its position to impose "unfair" terms and conditions on Indian users, when many depend on WhatsApp to communicate in everyday life, according to the sources.
While Wipro will announce its fourth quarter (Q4) results along with annual financial statements on April 15, market leader TCS will hold its board meet the next day (April 16) for approval of its financial statements. Infosys is yet to inform investors the date it will announce its Q4 earnings.
BSNL will start providing telecom services, both wireless and fixed line, in Mumbai and Delhi on behalf of MTNL from January 1 on a pilot basis for five to six months.
Total income of Wipro was almost flat at Rs 15,571.4 crore at the end of the first quarter of 2020-21 compared to Rs 15,566.6 crore in the corresponding quarter of the fiscal year 2019-20.
Most Indian IT firms work as system integrators for Huawei and though the exposure is very less as of now, the potential is more due to 5G roll out. As pressure to keep the Chinese firm out of the 5G network grows, other global firms, including Japan's NEC, South Korea's Samsung, Finland's Nokia and Sweden's Ericssion are increasing their investments to grab more market share in the telecom sector.
The Delhi Police on Thursday said the statements by Twitter on the ongoing enquiry in the 'toolkit' case was mendacious and designed to impede the lawful enquiry.
In gifting the submarine to Myanmar, India is competing with China for influence in the region.
The company is also looking at creating an algorithm-based talent marketplace and an internal gig workers' community. Talent Cloud will be powered by Algo Talent Development, enabling associates to move across different technologies and industry domains.
The tech giant said it is unable to provide revenue outlook for FY 21 due to business uncertainty amid COVID-19 outbreak.
'It won't help being complacent about the momentum and valuations of equities that currently exist.'
While discretionary spend by global enterprises is likely to negatively impact all Indian IT firms, more revenues from products and less exposure to financial services segment are likely to lessen the impact for HCL Technologies and Tech Mahindra.
Though there have been no cancellations of contracts by invoking the force majeure clause, a number of clients - especially in the worst-affected sectors like travel and hospitality, oil and gas, as well as manufacturing - have started asking for reducing level of IT support.
The number of active cases remained below 5 lakh for the second consecutive day.
In the mid-tier space, clients with weak balance sheets are likely to ask for price revision apart from delay in payment.
The ministry of electronics and information technology has directed WhatsApp to withdraw its new privacy policy, according to sources. The IT ministry believes that the changes to WhatsApp privacy policy and the manner of introducing the said changes undermines the sacrosanct values of informational privacy, data security and user choice and harms the rights and interests of Indian citizens, government sources said. The government has given seven days to WhatsApp to respond to the notice and if no satisfactory response is received, necessary steps in consonance with law will be taken, sources informed. In a communication to WhatsApp on May 18, the ministry has once again told the messaging platform to withdraw its privacy policy 2021, they said.