Back in March this year, when the Indian government announced a nationwide lockdown to break the chain of COVID-19 infection, doubts were looming large if the Indian IT Services firms would be able to weather the storm.

The situation was truly unprecedented! Employees in distress, a drop in consumer demand, frozen wages, and a struggle to adopt full-fledged work-from-home models. Top IT Services firms such as TCS, Infosys, HCL, and Wipro were all scrambling to find a way to deal with the crisis and revive their business continuity plans.

Global uncertainty had heightened the fears of a deep recession among all IT Services executives. The worst part was that the crisis had come when the GDP of the Indian economy was falling.

At that time, several industry observers called it an irreparable disaster for Indian IT Services firms. However, others were hopeful that India’s showpiece IT sector had a comeback potential. But even they could not envisage that the resurgence would be too quick.

Better deal flows

In Q12020, the pandemic outbreak stalled the growth of almost every software services exporter. However, since July this year, the top IT majors have announced about half a dozen large strategic deals that indicate strong growth momentum for the industry in 2021 and beyond. Infosys large deal with Germany’s Daimler AG and American investment major Vanguard; Wipro’s with German multinational Metro AG; and HCL’s with Swedish telecom giant Ericsson are some of the major highlights during this period.

Infosys’s Vanguard transaction, valued at $1.5 bn, is the biggest deal ever signed by the tech major in its history.

All the Indian IT services firms saw a massive upsurge in their stock market fortunes throughout the year, indicating stronger investor sentiments despite the pandemic blues. For instance, the TCS stock has gone up over 24% compared to the pre-pandemic days in February; Wipro’s stock saw 20 years high at Rs 385 and Infosys’ recorded a 52-week high share price at Rs 1,259.

Tech Mahindra, a mid-tier IT Services player, saw a record new high of Rs 909 in November 2020 on the BSE due to its large deal pipeline and 5G focus.

Silver lining of new possibilities

In the wake of the growing location-independent digital workplace, enterprises are increasingly focusing on modernizing their architectures, deploying public, private, and hybrid multi-cloud models. There has been a sharper focus and resurgent demand for analytics, intelligence, insights, cybersecurity, and operations outsourcing to improve customer experience, employee expectations, and meet diverse information security needs. (See: Tech Cos take M&A route for digital transformation supremacy)

This has provided a mammoth opportunity for IT Services companies to address these challenges by delivering high-set engineering solutions to make the organizations productive and agile. (See: CIOs’ digital transformation focus accelerates recovery for IT firms)

The credit should go to the rapid technology investments made by IT services majors to respond to enterprises’ new critical challenges. (With Encore buy, Wipro eyes DX edge in fintech)

Indian IT Services firms have been aggressive and acquiring capabilities to address the structural changes in the delivery models and long term consequences of the pandemic in the times to come. Moreover, they also offer a low-cost delivery model, helping them race ahead even in tough times.

Skeptics, who had slammed the Indian IT services firms before the pandemic and doubting if it had reached a maturity stage in terms of growth, are being proven wrong.