Interview with Deepak Chaudhari, Country Head of TCS Ireland

We recently chatted with Deepak Chaudhari, Country Head of TCS Ireland, to find out more about their business, their operations in Ireland and their future plans.

Tell us about Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and your business?

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is an IT services, consulting and business solutions organisation that has been partnering with many of the world’s largest businesses in their transformation journeys for over 55 years.

A part of the Tata group, India’s largest multinational business group, TCS has over 600,000 of the world’s best-trained consultants in 55 countries.

Earlier this year, we were rated as the second most valuable IT services brand in the world in the 2024 Global 500 IT services Ranking by Brand Finance.

Our overall mission and goal at TCS is to become the number one IT services and consulting brand worldwide and the partner of choice for large enterprises in their ‘growth and transformation’ journey.

Has TCS a strong presence in Ireland?

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has been operating in Ireland for over 20 years with a track record of sustained investment in the country. Today the TCS Ireland business employs over 1,000 people and is one of the largest employers in the North-West of Ireland, where we have established a Global Delivery Centre, in Letterkenny.

TCS in Ireland provides business, digital and technology services, supporting local Irish companies, global companies that have a presence in Ireland and customers based internationally.

What clients do you work with?

TCS Ireland proactively draws on the experience, IP, and track record it has gained internationally which it can bring to local projects. With over 30 customers in Ireland today, TCS counts indigenous organisations such as ESB, Eirgrid, Aer Lingus, Bank of Ireland, Aptiv and multinationals such as Aviva, AIG, Ericsson, Citibank among its key clients.

We are growing our customer base being serviced from Ireland and recently partnered with the newly established business, AIB life and Nest, the UK’s largest workplace pension scheme, on two significant new digital and cloud-based administration platform solutions.

The TCS customer base operates across key industries like financial services, insurance, retail, manufacturing, life sciences and public sector. The company’s offerings cover the length and breadth of business and technology services from consulting to transformation initiatives, cloud solutions, blockchain, cyber security and cognitive business operations.

Tell us about some of your most recent innovative client wins to date?

TCS was selected as the strategic partner for AIB life, the newly formed joint venture between Allied Irish Banks plc and Great-West Lifeco, to help build and launch a digital first, full-service life company for the Irish market.

TCS helped create a modern, cloud-based technology stack ground up, with our flagship insurance platform TCS BaNCS™ at the core that gives AIB’s 3.2 million customers the ability to access financial advice and a range of integrated AIB life protection, pensions, and investment products in their branch, by phone and via the AIB mobile banking app. The solution also integrates with AIB’s nationwide network of 120 financial advisors from whom customers can seek financial guidance.

In addition to designing and deploying the enabling technology stack, TCS is also providing IT, customer, and claims handling services for AIB life in a managed insurance services model. The end-to-end policy administration services will be provided from the TCS Global Delivery Centre in Letterkenny, Co. Donegal.

Recently, AIB Life was awarded the prestigious global Celent Model Insurer Award in the category of ‘Digital and Emerging Technologies’. The award was very much based around AIB life’s ability to demonstrate extraordinary results for best practice in technology usage. As one of AIB life’s strategic technology partners, the award is a great source of pride for all involved.

Separately, TCS has been expanding our long-standing partnership with Nest, the UK’s largest workplace pension scheme, with the delivery of a new customer service and care support operation based out of our Global Delivery Centre in Letterkenny. Nest provides pension auto-enrolment services to more than 13 million members and one million employers across the UK. Nest and TCS have worked closely since 2011 when the digital-first and auto-enrolment pension scheme was launched for the first time in the UK.

The purpose-driven partnership between Nest and TCS has resulted in an immensely successful pension plan for the UK workforce, that is now a global benchmark on how an innovative, user-friendly, auto-enrolment pension scheme should be run.

Tell us about your team here in Ireland?

We have over 1000 people providing services to our Irish and Global customers in Ireland. The teams are spread across Dublin, Cork, Galway, Athlone, working on site or at the Letterkenny Global Delivery Centre. Our key mantra has been to “Deliver our global experiences locally” for our customers.

We have a very diverse workforce here in Ireland. Diversity and inclusivity are at the heart of the TCS culture. Approximately 37% of our Irish workforce are women which is significantly above the 21% IT Industry standard. I am very proud to say that our Global Delivery Centre has recently been awarded the Investors in Diversity Silver accreditation by the Irish Centre for Diversity.

Our Letterkenny Global Delivery Centre currently uses 99% green energy, intending to become energy self-sufficient on site by 2027. The campus has 696 Solar Panels installed, which results in the carbon savings from solar panels equivalent to planting 697 acres of forest or removing emissions of 126 vehicles for one year. This demonstrates the ongoing commitment that TCS has for creating a sustainable building for their staff to work in and is also why it has been awarded the Energy Efficiency Initiative Award at the recent Business & Finance ESG Awards.

We have huge growth ambitions in Ireland and are currently recruiting across several key areas such as Cyber, Cloud, and Digital Marketing.

What are some of the biggest challenges facing your industry currently?

We have seen the technology landscape changing every year. Businesses have an opportunity to leverage technology to advance themselves. With the focus on AI, businesses need to reimagine themselves and concentrate on the long term benefits for their businesses. A number of businesses are struggling with technology debt that has been created over years as they try to adapt to be more digital, moving to cloud, using analytics and getting actionable insights from the huge amounts of data to inform their decisions, while ensuring right security. TCS in Ireland is supporting a number of clients on these goals in Ireland.

What are your plans for the future?

TCS has an ambitious plan for increasing its capacity in Ireland. We are uniquely positioned as one of the largest and fastest growing IT brands in the world, now with sizeable operations in Ireland.

With our Global Delivery Centre in Letterkenny, Irish customers have a unique opportunity to leverage TCS’s global expertise locally with a wide range of talent and capability available to them. Having achieved growing success in Ireland, we continue to invest into the Irish market and are confident the business will continue to play an impactful role as a technology and digital transformation partner for our local customers in the months and years ahead.