Big 4 IT's

New Delhi: The country’s four top IT firms — TCS, Infosys, Wipro and HCL Technologies — have seen their combined cash chest swell to a whopping $8 billion (Rs 43,200 crore), even as the overall business trends remain sluggish for the entire sector.

While Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and HCL Tech managed to post strong financial numbers for the quarter ended March 31, 2013, the results were mostly disappointing from Infosys and Wipro. However, all the four companies have maintained a strong cash balance as on March 31, 2013.

Tata group’s IT arm, N.  Chandrasekaran-led TCS closed the latest fiscal with total cash and cash equivalents of $1.24 billion with an increase of $100 million during the year ended March 31, 2013.

Its closest rival, S.D. Shibulal-led Infosys also saw its cash balance soar by $300 million to a humongous $4.34 billion at the end of fiscal year 2012-13.

Azim Premji-led Wipro, which posted slowest sequential growth in revenues in the quarter ended March 31 among the four companies, also managed to end the fiscal with cash and cash equivalents of $1.56 billion.

HCL Technologies, the country’s fourth largest IT firm, ended January-March quarter with cash and cash equivalents, (including deposits) of $762 million, a sharp rise from $398 million at the end of March, 2012.
TCS has posted annual revenue of more than `50,000 crore for 2012-13, as against about `39,000 crore of Infosys and Wipro’s `34,500 crore.

HCL Tech follows a financial year of July-June and its total income in the last fiscal ended July 30, 2012 stood at about `9,000 crore. In the quarter ended March 31, 2013 — the third quarter of the current fiscal 2012-13, it posted total income of over `3,000 crore.

Expessing their opinion on the trend, experts said that the top Indian companies need to make investments rather than protecting their cash hoard. One way is to invest in shifting the business model. Se-cond, Indian IT’s big four need to expand their presence in “intense geographies and markets” such as the United States and the United Kingdom.

They said, “IBM and Accenture led the change to value-added services after realising that without large Indian operations, they ran with the risk of losing large bases of business. Indian firms too need to face up to this reality, but they don’t see themselves in the same dire shape and therefore, psychologically, this shift is harder to make. The firms need to shift on their own before they are forced to do it.”