Mumbai: Foreseeing a market of Rs 2,000 crore in the next three to five years, India's largest IT exporter Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) focuses attention on small and medium enterprises (SME) segment to make Information Technology as-a-Service (ITaaS) offers, reported Business Standard.

As a part of the plan, the company has recently signed an agreement with Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC), an industrial council, to provide end-to -end IT solutions and services to its nearly 11,000 members. TCS is expected to invest $1 million (around Rs 5 crore) to develop applications and solutions to AEPC.

Besides, the company had also inked contracts with Pithampur Audyogik Sangathan (Indore) that has 500 members and Coimbatore District Small Industries Association, which has over 5,000 members.

Venguswamy Ramaswamy, Global Head, small and medium business, TCS said, "AEPC has given us 10 anchor customers with whom we will be working and creating a business solutions for the apparel industry. This will not only take care of access device, network solutions, common office and administrative solutions but will also take care of core technology requirements like ERP (enterprise resource planning) and supply chain management."

Ramaswamy also mentioned, "Our approach is to target industry clusters. As firms in such clusters tend to follow what the other members are doing. Currently, we are working with over 40 customers in multiple clusters. Our focus for the first year is to have a good set of anchor customers and then scale it up."

Ashok Rajani, Vice-Chairman, AEPC said, "Many of the apparel members have IT systems but none among us has a system that caters to all our requirements. Besides we have to upgrade our systems at regular intervals, which entails considerable investment. If TCS is able to get a system in the next eight months it will mean huge cost savings." "Embracing IT is important as many of the international partners are insisting for an online presence," he added.

"ITaaS' contribution to the overall revenue will be significant in the next few years. If you look at the apparel industry, the members are in the revenue bracket of Rs 200-300 crore and it can go up further," Ramaswamy pointed out.

TCS is also focusing on verticals like education, retail and healthcare. The company will target universities in education sector.