Interview Abhinav Kumar, Chief Communications & Marketing Officer Europe of TATA Consultancy Services.
Abhinav Kumar, Chief Communications & Marketing Officer Europe of TATA Consultancy Services. He won multiple business awards, and is (co-)author of several highly noted reports and
publications in marcom and pr. Dag van de Vrouwen had the opportunity to do an interview with him at TCS Amsterdam Marathon.
Can you tell us something about TCS, which stands for Tata Consultancy Services?
TCS is a large IT services firm. We build and maintain related services for some of the largest corporations in the world, including in the Netherlands. For example ABM AMRO, ING, KLM, Rabobank and Randstad. We manage all their technology for them.
It’s a real pleasure to be here at the TCS Amsterdam Marathon again, supporting this event which is very important for the city and what will help to strengthen wellness and health in the local community. It’s also an important moment for us, because a lot of customers and employees are running in this race. This year we have 2.500 runners of customers and employees to join in this race. The TCS/ABN AMRO team has 600 people who train together, practice together and come here to run today. It’s a very exciting moment for them.
TCS is title sponsor of this marathon, Why does TCS specifically invest in local communities?
This has always been part of the DNA. The Tata group has the largest business group in India. And when you look at the structure of the group, 2/3 of the holding company is owned by charitable trusts. So a majority of the profit that will end up in the holding company is reinvested back into society. In India and elsewhere in the world we run hospitals, provide diverse scholarship programs, environmental programs, support education and so on. It has always been an intrinsic part of the group to give back to society where we operate in. The Netherlands is a very important center of activities for us and we are here already for some decades. In fact Amsterdam was our first office in continental Europe where we started European operations a long time ago, and it always stayed our largest operations here. There are many things we do in society. The TCS Amsterdam Marathon is now done for 6 years, and we've recently signed on for another 5 years until 2020.
We see this as one of many ways to contribute back to society on a very important area of health. Being in a technology sector, it's one of the things we push both inside our company and also encourage our ecosystem partners and the community to focus on health. If you are a software professional, most of the day you’re sitting while working with your computer or laptop.
That’s not good for your health if you do not balance it with a level of activity outside. We have a strong fitness program even inside our company called 'Fit for Life' in which we are encouraging all of our employees to do something. Running is one of the activities, but you can also do cycling or whatever it is and log those activities. For example, last year our employees across the world logged in 6 million kilometers, which is like taking 150 laps around the world. This is a big passion and it goes all the way from new employees to the top to our CEO who is a runner.
Last year our CEO came here and he ran in the TCS Amsterdam Marathon. He is a big inspiration to large parts of the company, because if a busy CEO with such a difficult agenda, managing a big global company with operations in 46 countries and 370.000 employees can find the time to run, than nobody else has an excuse that they cannot actively join our Fit for Life program.
What does TCS want to achieve in business for the next years to come?
We are looking for growth. I have been in this company 15 years already, joining at the start of the millennium. In that time TCS was also a big company with 14.000 employees. Today we have 370.000 employees. This is a tremendous growth and it reflects the direction of business and society. So if you look at any sector, whether it’s banking, telecom, retail, or automotive, there is more technology being used everywhere to improve services, the way you link up with customers, or to run your organization more efficiently. We are helping many businesses making that change and embrace the digital economy. We see a lot of potential there and we are always looking for more growth. The Netherlands is as I have said before, historically a very important center for us and it’s still one of our largest country operations. Europe is crucial for us. Our largest market in the world is North America, but Europe comes next with 30% of the total revenues.
Technology is a sector of the future. There are so many things that come down the chain which will help and improve life.
Does the TCS group have a diversity program in her CSR strategy?
Sure, if you look at diversity in one sense we have in terms of ethnicity over 120 nationalities being part of our employ base. That’s one angle. And if you look at diversity at the point of view of gender, than we are now one of the world’s largest employers of women.
Out of our 370.000 employees, more than 100.000 are women. The software industry has always been a very attractive sector for women to work in because it allows a lot of freedom and you can work from a distance. One of the challenges for women working in many sectors is taking time off for the family, it’s difficult to come back for work. But in our sector it’s very easy. You work on projects, take time off and you can come back working again. Since the IT industry has always new projects to work on, women returning to work in technology find great opportunities to continue their careers without losing any momentum. Other than that, we are focused on wellness and health as one of the important areas of our global csr projects. There are 9 marathons across the world in which we partner, 3 in the United States, 3 are in Europe, including Amsterdam, Lidingöloppet in Sweden and the London marathon where we are the technology partner and also 3 others in Asia.
We also focus a lot on education which is crucial. When technology comes more in demand it's really important that we put a lot of effort in schooling systems, that we educate and showcase students opportunities available in technology. So we do this in schools, giving classes, encourage school institutes and communicate about science technology, mathematics orientated careers. Our STEM education programs across the world, have inspired over 2 million young people towards careers in technology. In the third place the environment is an important topic in our csr agenda. Technology is by definition a cleaner sector. We do the best we can as a business in terms of energy efficiency with regard to the environment. We also look at our ecosystem to keep things sustainable.
We understand you have to go now to the finish line of the marathon...
Yes, I have the honor to hold the finish ribbon for the runners. It is a lovely day, the temperature is just right, the sun is out, the crowd is out, they cheer everyone on and I hope that we might have a shot close to the world record. I’m going to hold the ribbon very proudly.