MUMBAI: At any gathering of brokers, analysts and investors, a major part of the conversation currently revolves around the new government and its policies. Thursday evening's Muhurat trading session at P J Towers, the headquarters of BSE in south Mumbai, which saw the sensex closing 64 points higher at 26,851, was no different.

Even though its recently-announced second-quarter numbers disappointed the Street, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest information-technology services company, managed to hold on to its margin estimate. The firm managed to do it despite a volatile cross-currency movement and the consolidation of its joint venture in Japan.

Rajesh Gopinath, chief financial officer of TCS, is confident that for the next two quarters, the company will be able to maintain its margin in the 26-28 per cent band subject to currency volatility. He added TCS would continue its strategy of reinvesting into business, and would rework the strategy once currency is stable.

MUMBAI|BANGALORE: After a few tepid years at college campuses, information technology companies are back to hiring in big numbers as Tata Consultancy Services BSE -8.73 %, Infosys BSE -0.30 % and HCL Technologies BSE -9.09 % ramp up recruitment. This is good news to the over 1.5 million engineers who graduate from the country's colleges every year and are struggling to land a job due to an oversupply of talent. Tata Consultancy Services, India's largest IT services company , said it will hire 35,000 freshers for fiscal 2016, boosting its rate of campus recruitment.The company hired 25,000 from campuses in fiscal 2015. Robust growth prospects led to the company raising the figure, TCS' human resources head Ajoy Mukherjee told ET.

Tata Consultancy Services, the country’s largest information technology services provider, will hire 35,000 from college campuses for 2015-16, for which it will visit 350-400 institutes. This is higher by 10,000 from the campus hiring it did for FY15.

TCS is the only IT company so far that has announced its FY16 hiring target numbers.

IT majors Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and HCL Technologies on Friday witnessed their biggest single-day share price drop in five-and-a-half years, after the September quarter earnings of the two companies failed to meet analysts’ estimates. TCS shares fell 8.73 per cent to Rs 2,444.9 apiece, while that of HCL Technologies dropped nine per cent to Rs 1,505.

TCS, India’s largest company in terms of market capitalisation, saw its value erode by Rs 47,000 crore and its market capitalisation fall below the Rs 5-lakh crore-mark. Tata Sons, which owns nearly 74 per cent in TCS, saw nearly Rs 35,000 crore worth of its holding get shaved off.

Benchmark indices were trading firm even as IT majors TCS and HCL Tech witnessed selling pressure after they reported lower-than-expected revenues for the quarter ended September 30, 2014.

At 9.30 AM, the Sensex is up 50 points at 26,061 and the Nifty is up 9 points at 7,757.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India's largest information technology services company, continued with its strong financial performance to post 13.6 per cent annual net profit growth in the July-September quarter.

By International Financial Reporting Standards, or IFRS, the company's revenue rose by 13.5 per cent on a year-on-year basis to Rs 23,816 crore and net profit by 13.6 per cent to Rs 5,288 crore. On a sequential basis the rates of growth in revenue and net profit were 7.7 per cent and 4.6 per cent, respectively.

Markets continued to trade weak weighed down by select index heavyweights even as Infosys helped offset some of the losses on the back of better-than-expected earnings.

At 10:20AM, the 30-share Sensex was down 233 points at 26,404 and the 50-share Nifty was down 70 points at 7,891.

Bandhan, which was recently granted an “in-principle” licence by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), has collaborated with FIS, a US-based company, as its technology partner for the launch of the proposed Bandhan Bank.

FIS will be providing a fully integrated banking and payments platform via a totally outsourced delivery arrangement at Bandhan, according to a press release by the company. The seven-year technology outsourcing arrangement will provide services like core banking, channel solutions, trade finance, debit card management and transaction switching. FIS will also be responsible for the delivery and management of the entire IT infrastructure including all disaster recovery capabilities and the inter-branch network.

Markets extended gains and were trading near their day's highs after the first hour of trade led financials and capital goods shares coupled with a rebound in IT shares.

At 10:45AM, the 30-share Sensex was up 298 points at 26,545 and the 50-share Nifty was up 88 points at 7,930.

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