Healthcare

What are top 4 Indian IT companies doing to combat COVID-19 crisis

Updated : March 31, 2020 08:52 PM IST

The Indian information technology (IT) companies have adopted various measures to combat COVID-19 crisis after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced 21-day nationwide lockdown.

Cognizant

In light of the COVID-19 situation, Cognizant announced an additional payment of 25 percent of the base pay for April for employees up to associate level in India and the Philippines. This applies to more than two-thirds of the India workforce. Cognizant will review the approach monthly.

Cognizant has enabled work from home for the majority of its offshore teams to ensure employee health and safety, and to maintain continuity of service for our clients, while safeguarding their data and protecting access to their systems.

HCL Technologies

Country's third largest software services firm said the impact on Q4 is yet to be quantified, but won't be significant as exposure to the more impacted verticals are not significant.

According to HCL, booking during Q4 has largely been on track as significant part of closures happened in January. Also, company's business model is a healthy mix of recurring product revenues, managed services and discretionary spend led professional services.

From a vertical perspective, the company said the exposure to verticals like oil & gas, travel & hospitality, high-end retail is in single digits. However, HCL is confident that company's business model will to emerge stronger in the longer term as it has been built for resilience during tough times.

Coming to work from home, 76 percent of our India-based employees and 92 percent of our employees in other geographies have enabled it. Also, it has been monitoring the COVID-19 outbreak since late January.

TCS

The Mumbai-based company has 85 percent of employees working from home.

Rajesh Gopinathan, CEO, said in the long run, technology providers like us will be more relevant than ever to organisations globally, "We were early on we took proactive measures like travel restrictions, cancellation of events & large internal meetings, safe working environments and processes, which helped minimize the impact."

The CEO said the company continues to support mission critical technology backbone for lutoeading global organisations, "Launched a program to ensure business continuity using secure borderless work spaces infrastructure which allows TCS associates working from home, both onshore and offshore, ensure business continuity with support from minimal associates working from offices."

Coming to shutdown which was announced by Prime Minister Naredra Modi, he said, "Worked with the government to allow the IT industry exemption from the lock down orders in order to support critical service delivery across India. Almost all federal, state and local authorities have been supportive and issued enabling notifications to exempt services to certain critical establishment/services."

Infosys

The Bengaluru-based company said it is guided by advisories from local governments from the 46 countries that firm is operating and it's taking steps to ensure operational readiness.

"Our team is monitoring the evolving situation 24x7, and I am briefed daily of the developments and responses. As we deal with the situation, we are extending support to our communities," Salil Parekh, CEO, said to clients.

"To this end, Infosys Foundation in the US will open up their learning platform for teachers, so they can continue to school their students from home. In India, Infosys Foundation has offered to partner with the government to help set up a medical facility to address the healthcare needs of citizens affected by coronavirus," he added.

U.B. Pravin Rao, COO, said, "Nearly 70 percent of our global workforce is now enabled to work from home leveraging collaboration technologies to stay connected with clients and colleagues."

"To inform and educate Infosys workforce globally, the company is inviting medical professionals and is implementing tightly regulated quarantining and contact tracing policies in compliance with local policymaker guidance," Rao added.

"Infosys BPM, in association with NASSCOM, is working with the government of Karnataka, to facilitate outreach to people in the state, returning from overseas travel, about self-quarantining practices and testing facilities. Infosys Foundation is partnering with the state government in Karnataka to help set up a medical facility to address the healthcare needs of citizens affected by the coronavirus," he said.