January 5, 2009; BANGALORE:

 

The top revenue earner in the Information Technology services  arena in India -- Tata Consultancy Services  -- has done it again. It has looked  to expand in cities other than the 'Usual Suspects':  Bangalore, Hyderabad, Gurgaon or Mumbai.

 

This time it has looked eastward at Orissa and has created TCS Kalinga Park in the state capital, Bhubaneshwar, on a 45 acre campus. A 1000-seats in a Global Network Delivery Model are up and working; another 6000 have been planned.

 

The campus,  part of India's network of Special Economic Zones is also said to be among the most energy efficient.

 

TCS has bucked the trend even five years ago, when it began moving into tier 2 towns: Its  largest training base is now in Thiruvananthapuram, within Technopark. In fact, 7 out of 10 TCS  hires are from such secondary centres.

 

The latest  issue of Dataquest relooks its DQ Top 50 rankings of six months ago -- but TCS retains pole position with first half earnings in  fiscal 2008-09  totalling Rs 13,364 crores. That's Rs 130.364 billion. The company employs over 1,10,000 and   according to DQ is one of the few IT players in India still recruiting on the campuses.  For many others  the message going out to  new hands recruited after campus interviews has, more often than not, been, ' don't call us, we'll call you -- as soon as we can'.