The largest global technology operation in Uruguay did not start as such, and it did so in an unfavorable social, economic and political context in the country. In May 2002, and with 15 employees, Tata Consultancy Services –an Indian multinational– began its expansion in Latin America with an office in Montevideo.
Verónica Lozano, Human Resources Manager at TCS Uruguay, said that when the firm decided to land in Latin America, the country was not among the first options due to a matter of size and market. However, after exploring several possibilities that did not finish convincing, Uruguay appeared on the horizon.
“Back then there was the government of Jorge Batlle, which was very receptive, providing the necessary guarantees for a company of this size to bet on settling in Uruguay. The current situation in the region favored us,” said Lozano. “From then on we have not stopped growing and we will continue to do so. Despite the existing challenge in the field regarding the availability of talent, from TCS we have invested in many plans and actions to be able to address it and continue to grow with different actions”, he added, in relation to the workforce in the sector.
After 20 years in Latin America, the firm has more than 2,800 people hired working to provide technological solutions to the world from Uruguay. Headquartered in Mumbai, TCS is present in more than 40 countries and has more than 600,000 employees worldwide, of which more than 25,000 are in Latin America.
TCS is an IT services and consulting company expert in technology and business solutions. All global service lines are provided from the country, in coordination with corporate TCS, offering from comprehensive technological solutions in the most innovative technologies, to the outsourcing of administrative services, in which they hire people with an administrative, economics or accounting profile.
young talent
“We really were very revolutionary and we believe that we changed the IT market a lot in Uruguay”, resumed the TCS Uruguay Human Resources manager, referring to the impact of setting up a company like this in this area and also in attracting talent.
“When we settled in, we began to recruit experienced talent and junior talent, students. At that time there were far fewer people dedicated to technology compared to today, so we also had initiatives to retrain professionals from other areas to turn them to the world of technology, such as students from other non-scientific careers, so that they could start from the basics in programming. At TCS we have had tremendous success with these programs. We believe that in the IT industry job retraining is achievable, since not all roles are programming, and when working for clients from various industries, the knowledge that professionals bring is always valued and very useful”, he stressed.
A moment of the anniversary celebration.
“We have truly been innovative and forward-thinking in generating and growing talent in our market. We were pioneers in, for example, teaching courses on various technologies in our “Knowledge Development Center” inaugurated in 2007, which was the first center dedicated to teaching IT by a company,” explained Lozano.
TCS has as one of its strategies the hiring of junior talent, with the aim of “providing a career” and “opportunities” in the long term; which comes together in an enriching “combination of profiles” between experts and juniors, who are usually students of systems engineering, systems analyst, of a specific programming language, or of testing, among others.
“They enter with a base and then we provide them with the specific knowledge that is needed for each project. There is a wide range of profiles and we are confident in our strategy of providing career opportunities and the necessary tools to improve and grow internally”, said Lozano.
TCS Uruguay is the largest technology company in the country. “Being the largest and global IT employer in Uruguay is not a value in itself, but it does give you the real possibility of generating career opportunities locally and globally, and it is our most important value offer,” he concluded.
Exponential growth
For the Human Resources manager, those who work in technology companies are “very privileged” to be located in an industry with “exponential growth.” Something that the pandemic “accentuated”. “For the most part, the companies that did not see their business impacted were the technological ones, because new opportunities were generated. At TCS we work for top-level global clients, who decide to develop their project from Uruguay”, she indicated.
Of the more than 2,800 employees who work in the Montevideo offices, 20% are foreign talent, most of whom come from India, but not exclusively, since they have collaborators of more than 35 different nationalities. Likewise, they have 42% women on their staff, being one of the most diverse and multicultural TCS centers globally, Lozano highlighted.
