Infosys on Wednesday said it will announce its earnings for the fourth quarter and the fiscal ended March 2015 on April 24, a deviation from its usual practice of kicking off the corporate results season.

Instead, it will be India’s largest software services firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) that will announce its set of numbers on April 16.

Dilip Shanghvi-led Sun Pharma displaced IT major TCS for the first time in three financial years as the country’s best performing stock in terms of market cap growth.

As on Thursday, Sun Pharma’s market cap stood at R2.12 lakh crore, gaining R93,811 crore during the fiscal, while TCS yielded its least market-cap in the last three fiscals. The IT major’s market cap stood at R4.9 lakh crore as on Thursday. In FY15, TCS’ m-cap has improved by R74,422 crore. In FY14 and FY13, TCS has gained market cap of R1.09 lakh crore and R79,649 crore, respectively.

BENGALURU: Top software service exporters are under pressure to drop prices to retain contracts with marquee customers such as American Express and Home Depot that are up for renewal this year, according to executives and experts involved in the contract negotiations.

Rates have fallen by double digits for some of the biggest customer accounts in the past six months, with companies such as Infosys and Wipro sacrificing profit margins to gain market share and incremental revenue from these key accounts, they said. Retaining strategic outsourcing contracts - that generate at least $100 million annually - is crucial to top IT firms such as TCS, Infosys and Wipro for them to be to mine such accounts that could increase in scope over the years.

Wipro, India’s third largest information technology services company, on Monday announced the appointment of a chief operating officer and said it was promoting two internal candidates as presidents.

The Bengaluru-based company named Abid Ali Neemuchwala, former business process outsourcing head at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), as its group president and chief operating officer (COO), a position lying vacant since A L Rao was made an advisor to the company after he retired in September 2009.

In line with an overall weak trend in equities, the combined market valuation of top nine Sensex companies dropped sharply by Rs 83,209 crore last week, with IT major TCS taking the biggest hit.

Barring Coal India, the rest of nine companies suffered erosion in their market capitalisation (m-cap) for the week ended Friday (March 13, 2015).

Wipro, India’s third largest IT services company, on Monday announced the appointment of Abid Ali Neemuchwala as Group President and Chief Operating Officer (COO), with effect from 1 April, 2015.

In his previous assignment, Neemuchwala headed business process outsourcing (BPO) services for Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) where he spent over 23 years of his career.

Tata Consultancy Services has elevated a woman onto its board of directors, earning the distinction of the being the only top Indian information technology (IT) services company to have a woman as an executive director. The Mumbai-headquartered company said, Aarthi Subramanian, who currently heads the global delivery excellence group had been appointed the executive director to the board for three years.

Tata Consultancy Services has been named as the top employer in Europe for the third consecutive year by a top employers certification agency, citing the Indian IT major as an "exceptional performer" in nine core human resources areas.

TCS, the leading IT services, consulting and business solutions organisation, has been certified as top employer in eight European countries - the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway by Top Employers Institute.

Top software exporter TCS has introduced a new platform which will increase the level of automation in underwriting for insurance business.

"The solution automates the ability to capture, analyse and make use of data in order to determine risk exposure and risk aggregation," the Tata group company said in a statement here.

After decades of low-margin work like server maintenance, India's information technology services firms are moving upscale in search of lucrative contracts for driverless cars and other advanced projects as online innovation changes clients' needs.

Companies from Tata Consultancy Services to Wipro are all joining Infosys in investing in new, high-end technology, industry watchers say. Earlier this week Infosys bought US automation specialist Panaya Inc for $200 million.

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