Hollowed Out: Global tech giant Tata Consultancy Services denies wiping out NZ jobs
Monday, 23 March 2026
New Zealand is losing its professionals to better pay offers overseas, and at the same time, companies here are reducing jobs - and sending some of their roles overseas. In the third part of this three-part series, The Post speaks to Tata Consultancy Services, the main company used by New Zealand companies on a productivity and cost savings drive.
Tata Consultancy Services has seen a surge in business in New Zealand over the past five years as organisations seek to “strengthen” their digital and technological capabilities post-pandemic.
Its staff numbers in the region have grown at 200% a year in the last three years.
But the technology service provider says it is not responsible for its partner companies’ decisions to lay off hundreds of staff.
Sitting down with The Post in Auckland, Tata Consultancy Services New Zealand country head Ganesh Ramani says there’s an incorrect belief the global leader in IT services is scooping up the jobs its partner companies let go.
Read more:
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“We're not here to say ‘you probably have staff that we can offshore and give you the leverage of cost arbitrage’,” Ramani tells The Post. “That's not necessarily the reason that we've gone into the partnership. [It] is all about, ‘how do we unlock the potential value by going through a legacy modernisation journey’.
“I understand as a result of that, there have been some layoffs, which is inevitable, but we try to see how we can make a business profitable.”
A digital partner to most of Australia’s top 10 listed companies, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) works with more than 20 large organisations in New Zealand.
High-profile and publicly listed companies such as Air New Zealand and The Warehouse Group, and banks, are part of its clientele. Not coincidentally, they have also laid off many jobs, and sent others offshore, after working with TCS.
But Ramani - freshly back in the country after a visit to the company’s headquarters, Banyan Park campus in Mumbai, India - says TCS is doing the job of filling the digital skills gap in New Zealand. It is also helping organisations update legacy technology, and that sometimes comes with a change of personnel.
But that doesn't mean those jobs are going to TCS, he says.
The company, with an office in downtown Auckland, is primarily an adviser around technology, it is not in the business to take those jobs or to bring those jobs in-house, says Ramani.
Upskilling a workforce in specific technologies is one of the main services it offers, alongside digitisation, new technology adoption, AI and consulting.
Its typically strikes up five-year partnerships with its clients, and as part of the work, Tata staff are assigned to work within the organisation alongside its existing staff, says Ramani.
However, he says replacing or cutting jobs is not part of TCS’ remit.
Ramani says companies are always asked what their core objectives are, and their current position, with a view to enacting technology adoption and modernisation.
“With the advent of some of the low-code, no-code platforms, it does away with some element of licensing costs, so we bring in some of that expertise and say [other] companies have actually adopted this technology; we outline the benefits…we give them insights for them to make the decision, we do that across the world today.”
The company’s ultimate parent is Mumbai-based Tata Group, but the company has 60 regional offices worldwide and is focused on increasing its local hires in each of its markets.
It has been operating in New Zealand for 37 years, and four years ago established its first New Zealand office in Wellington. Now based in Auckland, it has 175 staff, including testers and software engineers.
A service provider, Tata does not develop products for general use, like Microsoft, for example.
Ramani says the usual question put to the consultancy is from companies wanting to know about leveraging and scaling the adoption of AI throughout their companies and workforces.
They also want to know about the pitfalls of AI adoption.
“Our entire literacy and adoption program for AI has a mandatory requirement on responsible AI and ethical fair AI frameworks, where we help to set the guardrails for people to adopt and embrace this new technology,” says the country head.
He says TCS, which employs more than 600,000 staff globally, is repositioning itself to be “the world's largest AI-led service organisation”.
TCS and OpenAI have committed US$6.5 billion to establish and build the HyperVault data centre in Mumbai. The project has commenced but the centre has not been completed yet. It will have 1GW of capacity once it is finished.
The company also has co-creation relationships with Nvidia, Microsoft, Google Cloud, AWS and ServiceNow.
TCS reported US$1.5 billion in AI revenue in FY25, coming from more than 5500 AI-related projects, globally.
Its business in New Zealand, particularly in AI, has been growing in recent years, especially in the past three years.
“Every company has a stated objective and is trying to be number one in New Zealand first. There are some companies in New Zealand today, who aspire to be outside of New Zealand as well, so that is where companies like TCS come in .. to [impart] global best practices and learnings.”
Ramani says it is unfair that Tata gets a bad wrap when it comes into an organisation, even if job cuts often follow.
“I think people are getting it wrong,” he says, adding that CEOs and CIOs across all sorts of companies are grappling with legacy systems that need to be updated in order for the company to maintain competitiveness.
“We've give them a deep dive into how that realisation could mature, and that's what we want to stick to.
“Our job is to help our partners on their technology journeys. There are some decisions that are independent to them, because they are also responsible. They are listed in the market, they've got to make certain calls, [but] our remit is basically to help them on the technology journey.”
Tata Consultancy Services is listed on the India’s National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange. Its revenue growth has slowed over the past few quarters, as a result of the risk of AI on its own business.
While its share price has fallen by almost 40% in the last 12 months, it maintains a market capitalisation of US$90b(NZ$155b).
Its reported revenue for the 2025 financial year was US$30.18b ($52b), with about 8% of that made in the Asia Pacific region. Specific New Zealand earnings are not broken out.