It's Over for Infosys: TCS is the Next Forerunner

Bangalore: India’s top software exporter, Tata Consultancy Services, established its position as the IT front runner while Infosys, for long the jewel crown, became ingrained as the plain number two.

As they met the earnings expectations after market hours, TCS hushed the alarm bells that rang in the morning when Infosys dissatisfied yet again and lowered its revenue guidance for 2012-13 to around 5 percent.

Partha Iyengar, vice-president of research at Gartner India, said, "Infosys should not be looked at as the bellwether for the industry anymore. It is TCS, and TCS is confident of outperforming (software industry grouping) Nasscom's numbers as well. There are deep, endemic issues with Infosys and you don't get the confidence from its management that things are fine."

Nasscom has predicted that the IT industry will grow 11-14 percent in the year to March 2013. TCS does not make revenue or profit forecasts but Infosys bunged the practice of guiding for the next quarter saying conditions were too unstable.

The Infosys-TCS results were something that has not happened before and it was watched very narrowly as of its importance for a sector that employs more than two million people and India's broader economy. The two account for nearly a quarter of the country's software exports, and the IT services sector, at $100 billion, makes up one-fourth of India's total exports. TCS Beats Street Expectations with 38 percent revenue growth.