TCS sees fall in staff attrition, robust demand for IT services: Top exec

More tech talent is expected to enter the job market from startups facing funding crunches, as central banks withdraw stimulus and hike rates: Girish Ramachandran

India's top software services exporter Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) expects the rate of staff departures to fall and demand for its services to rise as companies continue with their pandemic-hastened digitisation processes, a company executive said.

More tech talent is expected to enter the job market from startups facing funding crunches, as central banks withdraw stimulus and hike rates, TCS Asia Pacific President Girish Ramachandran told the Reuters Global Markets Forum on Monday.

"Money is becoming more and more dear. There is nothing like free money out there any longer," he said, adding that those attracted by startups over the last few years "will have to look for (other) options."

"If I look at the last few months' trajectory, attrition will come down over a period of time," Ramachandran said, ahead of Temasek's annual Ecosperity sustainability conference in Singapore.

TCS' rate of staff attrition, the percentage of those retiring or leaving for other reasons, rose to 17.4% in the quarter-ending March 2022 from 15.1% in the whole of 2021, as India's IT services sector experiences a tech talent crunch and high staff turnover.

Ramachandran, however, said India still had a significant talent pool. "We just need to start looking at how do we get access to the best talent and ensure we train them, so that we're ready to deploy them."

Despite uncertainties around a potential global slowdown, Ramachandran said demand for TCS's software services had not slackened.

"Digitisation is irreversible," he said, adding he did not expect organisations that went digital during the pandemic to significantly reduce their tech budgets.

With the pandemic abating, Ramachandran said he expected a hybrid work environment to become the norm, especially in the tech sector.