Big test for TCS CEO today as demand, GenAI pose threats

Five things to watch out for in today's quarterly earnings from TCS, India's largest IT services co

- Jas Bardia

Tata Consultancy Services Ltd's (TCS) annual strategy meet in Dubai in February, chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran underscored the importance of generative AI (GenAI) and the need to incorporate the new technology in all that the company does.

However, for the country's largest information technology (IT) services company, more concerning than incorporating GenAI now is the challenge of overcoming macroeconomic uncertainty.

On 2 April, US President Donald Trump imposed a range of tariffs on imports from several countries, triggering concerns of a worldwide tariff war.

Analysts are worried that the world is on the cusp of a recession. Any recession is bad news for IT services.

Chief executive officer Kunchitham Krithivasan faces his biggest test—managing more than 600,000 employees at a time of macroeconomic uncertainty.

A side of GenAI posing an existential dilemma to the country's $283 billion IT industry, in addition to an already full plate of macroeconomic uncertainty, is a meal the TCS veteran will find tough to digest.

Mint puts the spotlight on five important things to watch out for in TCS's fourth-quarter earnings scheduled on 10 April.

Demand outlook

The dominant concern is the uncertain macroeconomic environment.