How TCS displaced Infosys as the bellwether of India's IT sector

TCS, India’s largest IT services company, is having a pretty good time of turning 50. As it enters its sixth decade, TCS is now one of the world’s 100 most valuable firms by market valuation. The market capitalisation of Tata Consultancy Services crossed $100 billion or Rs 665,275 crore on Monday, making it the first Indian company in a decade to reach this milestone. Unlike most of us, TCS’ management obviously didn’t hate their Monday morning this week. Tuesday was a bit of a bummer as TCS dropped back down to 98 billion but who’s counting, right? The rupee, which saw a sharp depreciation on that day, gained a bit the next day.

The last time an Indian company made it to the 100 billion club was in 2008. Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries hit that valuation 10 years ago.

Wait, Infosys isn’t a bigger name than TCS? In what is probably a pretty sweet feeling, TCS’ market cap is now almost 2.5 times more than its nearest Indian competitor, Infosys. So, no. Infy isn’t as valuable as TCS. Its market cap as on April 19 was $37.32 billion. In March 2009, TCS was 1.5 times smaller than Infosys in terms of market value. TCS’ valuation is now more than the market value of Infosys, Wipro, HCL & Tech Mahindra, combined.

So here’s how it went down.