The TCS Story

Title: The TCS Story…And Beyond

Author: S Ramadorai

Publisher: Portfolio Penguin, 2011 (First)

ISBN: 978-0-670-08490-6

Pages: 287

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is a premier enterprise in the IT sector in India that has footprints on a global level. TCS pioneered the growth of software and hardware services industry in India, right from 1968. Being a glamorous and highly paying sector, finding employment in IT is still the dream of most of the engineering graduates in the country. Naturally, this book appeals to a large swathe of readers who wish to follow the birth of the industry, the tribulations it had to undergo, the maturing phase and becoming the fountainhead of innovation in India. And who is more competent than Subramaniam Ramadorai, TCS’ CEO and MD from 1996 to his retirement in 2009 and is still the Vice Chairman of the company? With a repertoire of 37 years of dedicated service to the organization, as a humble programmer to the CEO of the mighty organization that TCS had become in 2009, Ramadorai saw the growth of the company from modest beginnings to one of the largest IT-services company in the world. In addition to a splendid innings as an industry captain, Ramadorai also worked as the Prime Minister’s advisor in National Skill Development Council. This exposure has widened the author’s perception of the company’s path towards the future and is evident from the lengthy chapters on the nation’s priorities and how IT can act an enabler of those lofty schemes. If you are expecting a detailed narrative of the growth of TCS interspersed with amusing anecdotes, you are going to be thoroughly disappointed. Ramadorai’s style is purely matter-of-fact and his long essays on how the IT industry should guide the nation’s progress are helpful only for students who want to compile school projects on these issues. The first part of the book, that is, from the author’s joining TCS to his rise as CEO is somewhat readable, but the second half is sheer rhetoric and dry oration.

Before going directly for the TCS story, Ramadorai begins with a good self-introduction and the background that prompted him join in TCS. As a reflection of the changing times and liberal mores of modern India, the author, even though born in a Tamil Brahmin family, didn’t experience any restrictions in studying or getting employed abroad. He completed his post graduation in the U.S and worked there for some time before joining the TCS. Conditions in India were not at all conducive to business under the draconian tentacles of the License-Quota-Permit Raj and the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act. It stifled enterprises making it virtually impossible for an Indian company to set up operations abroad or for a foreign company to start its business in India. However, Ramadorai makes only a cursory mention of the business climate, without pausing to make a dig at the failed policies in Nehru-Indira socialism. In this regard, the book is not a faithful mirror of the times, as the author falls short of exposing the skeletons in the chest. Probably he didn’t want to upset the politicians whose ancestors were instrumental in keeping India chained motionless to the steel pole of government control. Computerization was understood as a crime in the 1970s and 80s. The author tells an informative story of how TCS came to possess an ICL1903 mainframe when such equipments were hard to come by in India. LIC had bought this machine for their headquarters in Kolkata. However, the leftist unions opposed its commissioning on the grounds of perceived job losses. Militant trade unionism is still a curse in India as it was in those times. Finally LIC had no other option open to them than to sell the computers at reduced rates to TCS! Similar interesting anecdotes make up the first part of the book, the story from 1968 when TCS was born, to 1996 when the company matured in the software and services industry. The narration always steers clear of controversies and is somewhat pompous. How else can one account for a declaration like “I saw the TCS job as an opportunity to train our people on new technologies and one day make this available to Indian markets when they were ready for it” (p.34) and “for TCS, it was always about building the brand and the creation of vital infrastructure for the country, the value and profitability of the project was often secondary” (p.71)?

After Ramadorai took over as CEO in 1996, the company had a prodigious rise in fortunes. The CEO’s mission of reaching ‘Top 10 by 2010’ was successfully achieved, in part because it had a chief who believed that “a CEO must have a strong working knowledge of the technical environment he is managing”. The growth of software industry that catered to an international audience was also due to strict import curbs imposed by earlier Indian regimes, in which no company was allowed to import anything, unless they gave a undertaking to the effect that they would earn twice the import costs as export over a span of five years. So, importing mainframes and computers mandated them to export services and reclaim the money. TCS adopted its CEO’s motto that “business is as much about building relationships as it is about technical capabilities”. Retiring in 2009, the author could well have taken pride of the fact that he led a premier institution that made the IT industry in India and was beholden to national priorities and committed to fine business ethics dictated by Tata’s respectable business methodology.

Ramadorai was an advisor to the Prime Minister in the National Skill Development Council. Possibly, such wider ambitions justify chapters in the book that goes much ‘beyond’ the TCS story. The chapter on ‘Technology as the enabler of development’ is one such. It perfectly lacks any connection to the author’s work in TCS, but purports to create an air of a political speech or the inauguration address of a knowledgeable politician. The chapter never rises above the level of a newspaper editorial and could’ve been written by a bright college student who follows developments closely. Some of the ideas seem outdated too. The author’s explorations urge the administration to invest in telemedicine, e-health and distance learning, in a bid to transport the benefits of technology to the villages so as to serve as the enabler for rural folk. This idea is clearly out of sync with contemporary needs. These options were highly relevant about 2 or 3 decades ago and the government addressed this issue in its right spirit. Now, after so much time, the effort must be to build brick and mortar solutions for education and health services. Technology-enabled services should migrate to other more value-added services on the ladder, such as banking, high speed communications and access to government services.

The book is really a manifesto of how the IT industry came into being in India and the growth of channels open to it in the changing times. Most of the time, the narration drops to the level of business presentations with no honest effort at telling the story of TCS in  a gripping way Especially the latter part of the book that chronicle’s the author’s years as CEO is nothing but self-congratulatory adulation about the company’s work. The matter and its presentation is unattractive and test the reader’s patience. The commitment that TCS is claimed to practice towards its customers is not employed by the author towards his readers. The latter half of the book is mostly detailed description of some corporate dossier. There is nothing more here than an inquisitive person could gather from the internet with a Google search with the words “IT and shaping modern India’ or some such terms.                

The book is recommended.

Rating: 2 Star