Reveal of White Paper and roadmap detail a combination of intense, compelling gameplay with rich creator tools to deliver a one-of-a-kind ever-evolving platform

Shrapnel, the world’s first blockchain-enabled moddable AAA first-person shooter game has released its White Paper and unveiled its roadmap following the completion of a successful private token sale. 

The $7 million USD private sale saw participation from major industry players including but not limited to Dragonfly, Defiance, Three Arrows Capital, Mechanism, Sfermion, Spartan, and Overwolf to contribute to the ongoing development of the game. Angel investors include the first pro-gamer Dennis Fong aka Thresh, Stephen Lim, Co-founder of Valorant and Raid Base, Brian Lee, Co-founder of The Honest Company, Keith Nunziata, Portfolio Manager at Citadel Global Equities, and Jason Zhao, Partner at Kleiner Perkins, amongst others.

The news follows a $10.5 million USD seed funding round led by Griffin Gaming Partners, alongside Polychain Capital and Forte, which took place last October. Since then, the Shrapnel team has grown from seven full time employees to 30 employees, with hiring efforts ongoing. 

Spun-out from HBO Interactive, the Shrapnel team has unmatched experience in transmedia, virtual production and gaming-as-a-service. Comprised of BAFTA and Emmy award-winning game industry veterans hailing from some of the world’s leading game companies including Xbox, Electronic Arts, LucasFilm, amongst others, the Shrapnel team will combine compelling competitive gameplay, with a rich set of community creator tools to deliver an ever-evolving game experience. 

Mark Long, CEO at Shrapnel, said, “Player-generated content is the core of the Shrapnel experience and even though we’re just getting started, we already have an awesome community that’s making the game their own. Now, as we reveal details of what players can expect, we look forward to seeing what else our players do. It’s super fun to be part of such a revolutionary design process.”  

Never-before-seen details of Shrapnel’s gameplay released in today’s White Paper describe a tense, competitive environment that creates new immersive player experiences. In this world, a massive asteroid has caused meteorites to bombard a large stretch of Earth, leaving an area known as the Sacrifice Zone uninhabitable and walled off from the rest of the world. Many speculate about what is being uncovered by guards there, with rumors swirling about a mysterious material called Sigma. Nations and corporations begin assembling their own military and extraction forces and a bloody war rages to control the Sacrifice Zone and its many secrets. 

Don Norbury, Head of Studio at Shrapnel said, “Players will be tasked with finding strategically important resources in the game, fuelling exhilarating extraction sequences but the buck doesn’t stop with them. Community involvement will drive gameplay and development at every stage in Shrapnel including design, roadmap and aesthetics. Creators will be able to design maps, weapons and other vanity items and exchange these in our marketplace. In line with our belief in the ethos of decentralized design, players who participate in all aspects of the game will receive reputational scores and get to provide input into game decisions. Ultimately, in the future, Shrapnel will be handed over to players, so putting the right controls in place to empower and moderate them is key.” 

In March, Shrapnel also unveiled plans to build on the Avalanche blockchain, capitalizing on the high degree of customization and flexibility that it offers for ever-evolving projects. With its unmatched processing power, Avalanche is well-equipped to enable the quick loading speeds and smooth player experience that Shrapnel players will expect. 

Plaid, the open finance data network, and payments platform, has appointed Ripsy Bandourian as its first Head of Europe as it continues to rapidly expand across the continent. Based in Amsterdam, Ripsy will lead the business strategy and operations for Plaid’s Europe arm as it moves into its next stage of growth. 

Having spent eight years at Booking.com, leading teams across product, marketing, and partnerships in Amsterdam, Ripsy has extensive experience in technology, operations, and driving consumer experiences at scale. Prior to Booking.com, Ripsy worked on emerging market strategy at Apple in London, was a consultant at McKinsey and began her career as a quantitative analyst at Goldman Sachs. 

Ripsy’s appointment is crucial to growing Plaid’s European businesses and supporting fast-growing fintech and companies outside of financial services, as they respond to changing consumer behaviours in the region. Recent Plaid research found that more than one-third of people make mobile payments where previously they used a credit or debit card, and more people now use fintech than social media. With digital payment methods and embedded finance becoming more critical, more companies will turn to fintech to improve their customer experience and drive faster checkouts. As such, Plaid will enable these companies to unlock new opportunities to better serve their customers.    

Ripsy’s appointment follows a period of significant growth for Plaid in Europe, highlighting the demand from customers wanting to use smoother and simpler methods to manage their finances. In the first quarter of 2022, Plaid doubled the number of payments completed on its platform, and grew its headcount by 30 percent. Plaid also recently added open banking payments capabilities for Italy, Ireland, and the Netherlands. In addition, Plaid offers Account Information Services for the UK, France, Germany, Ireland, and Spain and Payment Initiation Services in the UK, France, and Germany. 

Eric Sager, COO of Plaid said, “As more companies outside of financial services turn to fintech to create new products that better fit their customer needs, Plaid plays a key role in helping them understand what local customers across different markets want and how fintech can play a role in better serving them. Ripsy’s background in new market expansion, partnerships, and improving customer experience will help drive Plaid’s continued growth across Europe.” 

Ripsy Bandourian said, “The past two years have created intense shifts in how people in Europe interact with their money. Now, nearly every company with online customers is figuring out how to embed a digital financial service into its product. Having spent most of the last decade working with platforms and marketplaces, I aim to help Plaid harness this huge opportunity for growth and help companies across the region make sense of open banking and how they can leverage it to drive adoption of products and services, as consumers increasingly turn to digital financial tools.” 

Trading volume climbed to a new record despite the climate of heightened risk, up by 36% from the previous three months

Capital.com, the high-growth global trading, and investing platform, has today announced its results for the first quarter ended 31 March 2022. In this period, a total of USD 270bn was traded on the platform, up by 36% from the previous quarter.

Over the same period, the platform's user base grew by 27% with over 1 million new accounts created in Q1 2022. There are now more than five million people who have set up a user account with Capital.com. More than 345,000 traders have carried out trades, and more than 78,000 of these are active monthly.

Despite the climate of heightened risk, clients increased their trading activity on the platform by 43% compared to the previous quarter. According to David Jones, Chief Market Strategist at Capital.com, traders saw the increased volatility as an opportunity: “There's nothing like volatility to bring traders to markets, and we obviously had that by the bucket load in the first quarter of the year. Gold and oil were notably active markets as Russia invaded Ukraine - at its highest, oil was up 70% for the year so far and we weren't even three months in. As the quarter came to an end, it did seem as if stock market investors were taking the uncertainty more in their stride, and we saw at least some of the earlier 2022 losses clawed back. Whether they continue to buy the dip next quarter remains to be seen - but from a geo-political and markets point of view, the first quarter of 2022 won't be one that investors will forget any time soon.”

The top five most traded assets by volume across the group during the quarter were Crude Oil, the NASDAQ index, Gold, BTC/USD and the DAX index. Crypto Derivatives are not available to retail clients registered with Capital Com (UK) Ltd. 

Commenting on the results, Kypros Zoumidou, Managing Director, UK of Capital.com, said: “Our speed of growth has not shown signs of slowing as we progress through 2022. This has been a strong quarter for us, both in terms of new accounts created and volumes traded. These results demonstrate how we are successfully making trading and investing more accessible with cutting-edge technology, good pricing and education. This is the beginning of an exciting journey for us and we plan to bring more products and services to our global client base.”

​​With offices around the world, Capital.com enables clients to trade derivatives on more than 6,000 of the world’s most popular indices, commodities, cryptocurrencies (not available to UK retail clients), shares and currency pairs. In addition to its web and mobile-based platforms, Capital.com also provides clients with access to free education and trading tools to help them hone their trading knowledge. 

4G based LINUX POS Terminal has highest security protocol

Linux LP 7220 powered with a dual core cortex processor, 256MB RAM

Worldline, a global leader in the payments industry and the technology partner of choice for merchants, banks and acquirers launched one of the most advanced LINUX-based 4G POS terminal – LINURA LP 7220 with highest security protocol, Dual Core Cortex processor and 256MB RAM to enhance in-store digital payments experience in India.

This is an addition to the existing portfolio of Android and LINUX based POS terminals powered by Worldline and deployed by over 20 banks in India. The new terminal comes with industry leading features and upgrades across key parameters like faster processing capabilities, 4G communication speed, large memory of 256 MB Flash and 256 MB RAM, and wide acceptance among others. In addition, it comes with resistive touch screen, long battery life of 48 hours and a user friendly interface.

Key advantages of Worldline LINURA LP 7220 POS terminals are: 

Wide acceptance across all payment modes

It accepts card payments such as NFC based contactless cards, EMV chip and Magstripe cards; and form factors like BQR, UPI QR, SMS Pay, Amazon Pay, Samsung Pay among others. Merchants can extend the convenience of Value Added Services like BNPL, EMIs, Loyalty rewards management, Dynamic Currency Conversion to consumers. It generates e-charge slip push via SMS & Email for records.

Security and Certifications

Worldline POS terminals are complaint with latest safety and security guidelines. Worldline LINURA LP 7220 POS terminals are PCI PTS 6.x Approved, EMV Level1&2, EMV Contactless L1,Paypass, Paywave, American ExpressPay, Discover D-PAS, CE, TQM, RoHS, ISO90001, BIS, WPC, TEC approved. It also supports report download for TTG (Transaction and Terminal Gateway) and is capable of performing remote diagnostics for quicker resolution of operational issues.

igher conversions and added revenue streams for merchants

Customers can make payments through multiple modes including cards, UPI , BQR, link based payments resulting in higher conversions. Also, it provides merchants with supplementary revenue streams by offering EMIs, BNPL etc., increasing average ticket size and sales volume.

Ramesh Narasimhan, CEO – India, Worldline said,

“Worldline has been providing its clients with a state-of-the-art and innovative solutions to foster growth. The launch of LINURA LP 7220 4G POS terminal is yet another step to boost in-store payment experience for merchants and consumers alike. Our terminals will aid banks and their merchants to stay ahead of the curve in terms of mobility, speed, security and ergonomics and fulfill all payment needs with a broad range of services. We are set to enhance our physical merchant touchpoints of over 1 million spread across categories like grocery stores, restaurants, pharmacies, department stores and others by deploying up to 1,00,000 4G POS terminals in the first stage of launch via our partner banks.” 

Invity.io, provider of the in-wallet trading platform for Trezor hardware wallets, and Swan Bitcoin, a prominent Bitcoin onramp, have announced a new partnership to bring recurring, direct-to-custody Bitcoin purchases to Trezor wallets.

Automated purchasing within a cold wallet is the most accessible way for non-technical users to start saving value with Bitcoin while maintaining personal control over their coins from the very beginning.

“The key to Bitcoin's future is to welcome people who are currently intimidated by cryptocurrencies. But we've found that new users continually worry over two things: finding the perfect time to enter the market and keeping their Bitcoin safe. This integration solves both," says Pavol "Stick" Rusnák, co-founder of Trezor Company.

Stephan Livera, Managing Director of Swan Bitcoin, adds, “Bitcoin must be for everyone, especially in this age of runaway inflation. But not everyone is willing or able to contribute a lump sum to a new investment. By offering new users a straightforward way to buy Bitcoin in the amount they want and on their schedule, anyone can benefit from dollar-cost averaging while keeping their investment as secure as possible."

Recurring Bitcoin purchases are facilitated by Invity, which integrated Swan Bitcoin's API into the free Trezor Suite app, the coin management platform for Trezor hardware wallets. In the Trezor Suite Trade section, a "Save into Bitcoin" button opens a specially designed minimalist interface in a click. Users then fine-tune the amount of Bitcoin to purchase and how often in a way that suits their personal budget.

A linked bank account converts US dollars to Bitcoin automatically, and the purchased coins are sent directly to the user's non-custodial Trezor hardware wallet. This eliminates both exposure to vulnerable custodial solutions and manual, fee-incurring steps to move purchased coins to self-custody.

“Investing is a mental process for the long term and the only way to protect and build wealth over the long term. A completely self-managed asset like Bitcoin held on a hardware wallet is vital to creating an investment portfolio for the twenty-first century, and the meeting of our three companies makes this a reality for anyone," says Štěpán Uherík, CEO of Invity and CFO of Trezor.

Automated Bitcoin purchases powered by Swan Bitcoin and Invity will be enabled in the May 2022 update of the Trezor Suite. Swan is only available to people over eighteen years of age with a valid government ID and valid US bank account; this service is not available to residents of New York state. Invity is in talks to bring automated purchases to European users in the coming months.

Cyber security frontrunner to unify legacy brands under one name.

Sysnet Global Solutions, a leading provider of cyber security and compliance solutions, today announces its re-brand to VikingCloud™, unifying the businesses acquired by Sysnet over the last 18 months.

VikingCloud and ControlScan were both acquired by Sysnet in December 2020. VikingCloud delivers asset, event, and compliance management through its industry-leading next-generation cloud security platform, while ControlScan is a U.S. leader in managed security services specialising in compliance detection and response. In 2021, the business also acquired SecureTrust, an industry expert in Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance, risk management, and regulatory compliance and NuArx, a computer and network security company providing PCI compliance and payment security solutions to merchants and premium brands.

Sysnet, SecureTrust, NuArx, and ControlScan will now all operate under the VikingCloud name, with businesses and partners benefitting from a combined product offering delivered under two divisions - Partner Solutions and Business Solutions.

Partner Solutions services include:

• Managed Security and Compliance for SMBs – encompassing the PCI self-service compliance portal for SMBs with an acquirer view.
• Proactive Data Security (PDS) – offering managed security and compliance for SMBs.
• Web Risk Monitoring Services – helping acquiring organisations to detect illegal online marketing and sales activity.

Business Solutions services include:

• Managed Security Testing (MST)
• Managed Security Services (MSS)
• Managed Compliance Services (MCS)
• Consulting and Advisory Services (CAS)
• Digital Certificates (SSL)

The move will showcase the business’s extended expertise and capabilities, improve brand awareness, and stimulate cross-sell opportunities.

The company’s CEO and executive team encompasses key personnel from the acquired organisations:

• Robert McCullen, Chief Executive Officer (VikingCloud)
• Gabe Moynagh, President (Sysnet),
• Kevin Pierce, Chief Operations Officer (NuArx)
• James Kunkel, Chief Administrative Officer (Sysnet)
• Iordan Iordanov, Chief Financial Officer (VikingCloud)
• Mike Petitti, Chief Revenue Officer (SecureTrust)
• Niren Shah, Chief Technology Officer (Viking Cloud)

Robert McCullen, CEO, VikingCloud, commented: “Our recent acquisitions have broadened the scope of our offering and we are sending a clear message to businesses and organisations of all sizes around the world about the importance of securing information. While we continue to be the leader in delivering compliance solutions, our security expertise has expanded significantly, and the VikingCloud brand gives us an opportunity to more accurately reflect our entire offering.”

News of the re-brand comes at a time of rapid change for the global cyber security market. In 2021, the total number of cyberattacks increased by 50% year-on-year, with education, research, and healthcare hit hardest. As cyber threat actors refine their techniques and leverage machine learning and automation, the number and impacts of attacks are only likely to grow. VikingCloud aims to meet these challenges head-on, building on its recent momentum as it delivers enhanced solutions to clients of all sizes throughout 2022 and beyond.

In tandem with the rebrand, VikingCloud is integrating technology, processes, and people to make it easier for customers to interact with the business

A key component of this will involve enhancement of the company’s cloud-native Asgard Platform™, a highly scalable, fast, global, and feature-rich platform that blends algorithms and technologies to deliver hyper-effective cybersecurity and compliance.

• Real-time threat detection & analysis – analyses and learns from billions of events a day.
• Multiple frameworks – tracks adherence against multiple frameworks and standards.
• Predictive platform – utilises ML and AI to anticipate future threats and get ahead of adversaries.
• Asset behaviour analytics – provides enhanced context for identifying malicious activity.
• Unified findings repository – organises and prioritises findings from assessments and events.
• Event processing, and correlation and compliance – surfaces critical security events with real-time visualisation.

To learn more about VikingCloud’s range of solutions and products, please visit www.vikingcloud.com

With over two decades of experience, including stints at Google, Twitter, and Lyft, San Francisco-based Koji Pereira is the new CDO of the Brazilian fintech Neon

Koji Pereira

Koji Pereira, Chief Design Officer, Neon

Neon, a fintech company and digital bank focused on improving the lives of working Brazilians, today announced its appointment of Koji Pereira as Chief Design Officer. Pereira, who previously held the position of senior product design manager at Twitter will now lead Neon’s fintech product design.

Neon, which recently achieved unicorn status with its latest round of funding, believes that everyone deserves a bright future. The company was founded with the specific mission to decrease inequality and promote change -- in the lives of its customers and in the country of Brazil.

This mission was especially appealing to Pereira, who grew up in Brazil, but who will fulfill his role from San Francisco.

“Having the opportunity to build a product with such an amazing purpose - to reduce inequalities in Brazil - was something that really caught my attention and that I fell in love with,” says Koji Pereira, the new Chief Design Officer at Neon. “My main focus at Neon will be to use my inclusive design experience to ensure we build accessible products that work for everyone. I’m also excited to work with a team in Brazil, and continue to build a distributed team that includes top talent from the US, Brazil, and other countries as well.”

With over 20+ years of experience in product design, including managing teams at Twitter and Lyft, Pereira also had a long tenure at Google, and led Google's Design for Files, and launched many products, such as Camera Go, Android TV Data Saver, and Google Spaces.

Pereira holds BFA and MS degrees from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), as well as several specializations from institutions such as Harvard, MIT, and Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID). Additionally, Pereira has also won awards from MIT Media Lab's Design Challenge, Mobile World Congress, and Webby Awards.

Neon recognizes the enormous community of talented technology professionals in the United States and seeks to take advantage of that, hoping that the company’s purpose-driven mission will be appealing to many job seekers. Neon announced its new flexible hybrid work model, through the ‘Neon everywhere’ project launched this past January. This initiative will make it easy for the new Chief Design Officer to lead his department from the San Francisco Bay Area in the United States, where he currently resides.

Relativity, a global legal and compliance technology company, announced today that energy and commodity trading company, Vitol, has deployed Relativity's AI-powered communication surveillance platform, Relativity Trace. Relativity Trace was implemented in just under four months, monitoring communications for over 1,700 individuals employed by Vitol and its subsidiaries in over 50 offices and 20 different languages, to proactively detect regulatory misconduct.

With vast amounts of data spanning numerous geographic locations, Vitol leverages Relativity Trace to ingest all forms of electronic communications – including email, chat and audio – in near real-time and immediately flag the highest-risk content to compliance officers for further review. With proprietary email thread deduplication and AI-enhanced text cleansing, Relativity Trace has reduced Vitol's false positive alerts so only the riskiest content is surfaced. This advanced technology has enabled Vitol to expand coverage of their monitoring, and ultimately reduce risk across the organization.

"Relativity Trace's false positive reducing capabilities has allowed us to significantly increase our scope which is already proving to be valuable in capturing risk," said Odile Roy de Puyfontaine, Head of Compliance at Vitol. "With the time our team saves no longer being burdened to review false positives, we've been able to significantly strengthen the ability to detect real risk, quickly." 

Relativity Trace is used by some of the largest global commodity trading firms and financial institutions to proactively detect regulatory misconduct. 

"Surveillance teams are overwhelmed by the number of false positives that their legacy surveillance system generates," said Jordan Domash, General Manager of Relativity Trace. "With Relativity Trace, Vitol has successfully leveraged the system's advanced alerting and AI capabilities to see a dramatic 92% decrease in false positives in a short amount of time allowing them to narrow in on risk and misconduct that actually matter because significantly less time is allocated to reviewing content that should never have been alerted on in the first place."

Today, Square unveils the next generation of Square Stand, the company’s iconic countertop device that turns an iPad into a powerful, robust point of sale system that sellers can use to run their entire business. Square Stand features integrated contactless and chip + PIN payments technology, a sleek, professional design, and a new checkout flow that provides businesses and their customers with a more intuitive, transparent, and streamlined commerce experience.

The reimagined Square Stand offers businesses the most affordable, comprehensive, and easy-to-use device for conducting commerce. Square Stand combines Square’s point of sale software and hardware into one complete solution, enabling sellers to take in-person payments and manage ecommerce sales, deliveries, and click-and-collect orders from a single place. Retaining the classic swivel design of its predecessor, the new Stand now integrates Square’s lightning-fast contactless and chip card readers into the display, helping sellers simplify their countertops and keep their queues moving while eliminating the need for additional payments hardware. With contactless and chip + PIN payments making up 85% of global cashless hardware transactions on Square’s platform in 2021, these new capabilities help sellers accept now-standard payments right out of the box. 

The new Square Stand also transforms the buyer experience. New software for Square Stand creates a faster, more transparent checkout process that includes an order summary screen, a secure PIN interface and illuminated payment icons on the face of the device to guide customer transactions and speed up purchases. These additions provide sellers and shoppers with the benefits of a customer display without the need for a second screen. 

“Finding the right POS is always tricky” said Iain Alcott, Co-Founder of Franklin’s Wine Bar in Notting Hill - one of the first businesses to test the new stand. “Our challenge was to find a solution that manages all the moving parts of our business in one place, until we found Square. We’ve been using Square point of sale and terminals across our venues and gradually added products like Square Loyalty across our channels as we’ve grown. The new Square Stand helps us continue this integrated approach to selling by helping us to easily manage sales online while providing a clear and sleek in-store checkout experience for both our staff and customers.”

“The way businesses and shoppers interact around the world has evolved exponentially in the time since we first launched our original Square Stand,” said Alyssa Henry, Head of Square. “The new Stand was built with the future of commerce in mind. Marrying elegant design with powerful software, Square Stand provides sellers of any size, from boutique retailers to multi-location restaurants, with a versatile command center for their business. Square Stand offers sellers an integrated way to meet the purchasing preferences of today’s consumers.”

As Square’s innovative ecosystem of solutions has grown, so has Square Stand’s ability to serve sellers as a singular device to manage all of their operations. In addition to supporting all of Square’s vertical point of sale offerings, which include Square for Restaurants, Square for Retail, and Square Appointments, sellers can use Square Stand for all their employee management needs, including time tracking, shift scheduling, and tip management. Additional solutions like marketing, loyalty, inventory, and omnichannel commerce tools are also readily available from Square Stand. 

Introduced in 2013, the original Square Stand was a transformational iPad point of sale system, giving merchants a way to take payments and access business insights and analytics, all from one place. Square Stand remains popular amongst sellers of all sizes and serves as a common entry point for new businesses joining the Square ecosystem: nearly 60% of Stand purchases in the UK are by merchants who are new to Square. 

The new Square Stand will be available to order from June 2022 from Square and at participating retailers. Starting at £99 +VAT, Square Stand is compatible with the iPad (2019, 2020, 2021), iPad Air (2019), and iPad Pro 10.5”. Sellers pay one flat rate for every contactless or chip + PIN  transaction, with no hidden fees or long-term contracts, and free access to the Square POS app. For more information, please visit: https://squareup.com/gb/en/hardware/stand-2nd-generation 

• Highest Ever Order Book TCV: $11.3 billion in Q4; $34.6 billion in FY 22

• Highest Ever Incremental Revenue in a Year: $3.533 billion

• Q4 Revenue $6.696 billion, +11.8% (CC: +14.3%)

• FY 22 Revenue $25.707 billion, +15.9% (CC: +15.4%)

• Industry-leading Profitability: Operating Margin 25.3%, Net Margin 20% in FY 22

• FY 22 Net Income at $5.139 billion, +13.9%* YoY 

Tata Consultancy Services reported its consolidated financial results according to Ind AS and IFRS, for the quarter ending March 31, 2022.

*Excludes legal claim provision in FY21

Rajesh Gopinathan, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, said: “We are closing FY 22 on a strong note, with mid-teen growth and adding the maximum incremental revenue ever.  Increasing participation in our customers’ growth and transformation journeys, and an all-time high order book provide a strong and sustainable foundation for continued growth ahead.” 

N Ganapathy Subramaniam, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Director, said: “It is immensely satisfying to close the year with robust, broad-based growth, industry-leading margins and the highest ever order book. During the year, we took on technologically challenging, industry-first transformational programs and brought to bear the full power of TCS’ capabilities and that of our partner ecosystem, to successfully deliver market-changing outcomes. Our continued investments in building newer capabilities, our passion for innovation, our contextual knowledge and most importantly, our self-belief have been key to this, and these position us very well for continued success ahead.”

Samir Seksaria, Chief Financial Officer, said: “While continuing to make all the investments needed to support our growth aspirations, we managed the headwinds this year to deliver an industry-leading operating margin yet again. The successful completion of our fourth buyback in five years is another milestone in our shareholder-friendly approach to capital allocation.”

Milind Lakkad, Chief HR Officer, said: “With the highest ever net addition this year, consistently highest talent retention, benchmark talent development metrics, continued focus on health and wellbeing and numerous industry awards, we have reaffirmed TCS’ position as the #1 employer of choice.”

Q4 and Full Year Segment Highlights**

Industries:  All verticals grew in the mid to high teens. Growth was led by Retail and CPG (22.1%), Manufacturing vertical (+19%) and Communications & Media (+18.7%). Technology & Services grew (+18%) and Life Sciences and Healthcare grew (+16.4%) while BFSI grew (+12.9%).

On a full year basis, growth was led by Retail and CPG (20.6%), Manufacturing vertical (+19.4%), Life Sciences and Healthcare (+19.2%), BFSI grew (+16.7%), Technology & Services grew (+15.8%) and Communications & Media grew (+14.0%).

Markets: Growth among markets was led by North America which grew (+18.7%), UK grew (+13%), Continental Europe grew (+10.1%). Among emerging markets, Latin America grew (+20.6%), Middle East & Africa grew (+7.3%), India grew (+7%), and Asia Pacific grew (+5.5%). 

On a full year basis, among major markets, North America grew (+17.5%), Continental Europe grew (+15.1%) and UK grew (+14.3%). In emerging markets, Latin America grew (+18.2%), India grew (+16%), Middle East & Africa grew (+12.9%) while Asia Pacific grew (+6.7%) growth.

Services: Demand continued to be strong during the quarter as well as the full year across all markets, industries, and services, with growth led by Cloud, Cyber Security, Enterprise Application Services and IoT & Digital Engineering.

• Consulting & Services Integration: C&SI continues to play a strategic role for many customers in accelerating their growth and transformation journeys. Supply chain momentum focused on optimizing and automating fulfillment and distribution processes. Consulting-led cloud modernization services continued to see strong demand. Global M&A activity drove continued growth for related services during the quarter.

• Cloud Platform Services: The multi-year technology cycle fueled by cloud adoption continued apace. Clients are investing to build a new future-ready digital core, reduce technology debt, host mission-critical workloads, provide a unified view and advance on their sustainability goals. Key services which led growth are application modernization leveraging cloud native application development, data platform modernization and migration services.

• Digital Transformation Services: There was robust demand for ERP transformation and modernization, intelligent products, connected plants, connected health, managed security services, design led customer experience transformation and sustainability. There was increased adoption of enterprise cloud solutions in the areas of e-commerce and customer experience across sales and service channels, supply chain, human capital, analytics and significant back-office transformation. TCS Crystallus™ continues to find strong resonance with customers for their industry innovations. As governments strengthen the privacy laws and minimize risk of data leakage due to ransomware, TCS’ “Privacy by Design” offering is gaining traction.

• Cognitive Business Operations: There were multiple deal wins powered by MFDM™ and Cognix™ for digital transformation of operations in the areas of data center and networks, finance and supply chain and customer experience. Other themes driving the growth in this quarter include integrated application and infrastructure operations and vendor consolidations. TCS Cognix™ continued to make strong strides with the installed base crossing 200 customers.

** Year on Year Growth in Constant Currency terms

Key Highlights

• Sun Life Financial, a leading international financial services organization providing insurance, wealth, and asset management solutions to individual and corporate clients, has partnered with TCS on a digital transformation journey to implement a modern, cloud-based content management platform to drive digital engagement across all channels, enhance business agility and maintain competitive advantage by building brand relevance, leveraging analytics and maximizing marketing ROI. TCS is helping build a scalable, robust and futuristic architecture with machine-first approach, optimized platform with seamless integration across digital ecosystem, creating exponential business value. 

“At Sun Life we put clients at the center of everything we do, we've been trying to create new opportunities for clients to interact with us digitally and continuously elevate the digital experiences we give to them. We partnered with TCS for our transformation program to move to a best-in-class content management platform. It was a significant undertaking with hundreds of global sites, multi-markets, and hundreds of stakeholders that we had to bring together on this implementation journey and the total value proposition was very strong with TCS combined with an element of trust that really was the tipping point for this partnership. TCS proven track record in successfully executing similar projects helps us at Sun Life know that we're in good hands.” 

• Alice Thomas, Chief Architect and Digital Technology Officer, Sunlife

• Selected by Payments Canada, the country’s largest payment organization, to transform its payment system operations and help implement the Real-Time Rail (RTR), the new real-time payments system that will allow Canadians to initiate payments and receive irrevocable funds in seconds, 24/7/365. TCS will leverage its deep knowledge of the Canadian payments industry and extensive experience in designing and implementing large payment systems for its Canadian financial services clients to help Payments Canada create and execute an integration roadmap for the RTR.

“With three decades of experience in delivering market infrastructure solutions, TCS will be a valuable partner in the delivery of the Real-Time Rail. Testing and deployment is a critical step in the introduction of the new real-time payment system and we’re excited to work with TCS to execute on this next step for the RTR as we help shape the future of payments in Canada.”

• John Cowan, Chief Technology & Operations Officer, Payments Canada

• Selected by NXP Semiconductors Netherlands B.V., a global semiconductor company, to modernize their ERP landscape. TCS will design the migration approach and manage the change leveraging its contextual knowledge and TCS Crystallus™ to ensure a flawless transition. The composable ERP and improvements in UX will set the foundation for future initiatives.

• Selected by the Ministry of External Affairs, GoI, for the second phase of the Passport Seva Program, the country’s largest mission-critical e-governance program till date, following TCS’ successful implementation of the first phase when it digitized all the processes, set global benchmarks in timeliness, transparency, and reliability and delivered a world-class experience at the TCS-run passport centers across the country, making the service immensely popular and a source of national pride. 

• TCS has been proactively engaged with HARTMANN on a future product line to add to and expand their wound management product portfolio using a Digital Health solution for the healthcare professionals and patients. TCS will design and co-develop the solution with PHAG. This system will leverage technologies such as IoT, Cloud and Mobility.

• Selected by a leading US based pharmacy retailer and wholesaler to future-proof and secure their core infrastructure. TCS will transform its data centers and create a hybrid cloud stack with self-healing capability, powered by the TCS Enterprise Cloud platform and cognitive automation to deliver next generation infrastructure services. This will improve availability of business applications, enhance user experience, and deliver greater agility, flexibility, and scalability.

• Selected by a large Swedish Retail company, to transform to an enhanced Edge platform & Software Defined Network as part of its vision to migrate its IT landscape into a multi cloud resilient architecture.

• Selected by a US based leading wholesale distributor of food and grocery, as the strategic partner in transforming its business model to enable B2B & B2C.  TCS will build a digital core solution on a leading hyperscaler platform to bring agility in logistics management (order management, warehouse management and distribution capabilities) and cloud native data & analytics capabilities to uncover insights in customer journeys.

Research and Innovation

As on March 31, 2022, the company has applied for 6,583 patents, including 187 applied during the quarter, and has been granted 2,287 patents. For the full year, TCS filed for 704 patents and was granted 437.

Human Resources 

In Q4, TCS added 35,209 employees on a net basis, the highest ever net addition in a quarter. Employee headcount stood at 592,195, a net addition of 103,546 during the year, another all-time high. The workforce continues to be very diverse, comprising 153 nationalities and with women making up 35.6% of the workforce. 

TCS’ focus on organic talent development continues to produce best in class outcomes. In Q4, TCSers logged 22 million learning hours. For the full year, the company’s investments in learning and development resulted in the workforce acquiring 3.5 million digital competencies. The number of Contextual Masters crossed 50,000 – another key milestone in the journey to scale growth and transformation capabilities within the organization. 

The company’s philosophy of investing in people, and its progressive workplace policies have resulted in industry leading retention in an environment of increased churn. IT services attrition continued to climb, reaching 17.4%. However, incremental attrition has moderated.

Awards and Recognition 

Business Leadership:

• Ranked #1 in customer satisfaction across Europe, for the ninth consecutive year, in the largest independent survey of 1,800 CxOs from top IT spending organizations in Europe by Whitelane Research. TCS was ranked #1 in UK, France, Netherlands, BeLux, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway and Finland.

• Recognized by Brand Finance as the second most valuable brand in IT services globally, moving up one place in 2021. TCS’ new brand articulation `Building on Belief’ has resonated strongly with customers and helped the company expand its participation in their growth and transformation initiatives.

• Won 3 awards in partnership with clients at the DevOps Excellence Awards 2022 in UK for Best Automation Project (with Aviva), Best Use of Compliance as Code (with Nationwide Building Society) and Best Use of Microservices/Containers (with Lloyds Banking Group)

• Ranked the #1 Engineering Services PEAK Matrix Provider of the Year 2022 by Everest Group for the highest consolidated score across five engineering services PEAK Matrix evaluations published in 2021, in each of which TCS was ranked a Leader.

• Won the Best Indian Investment Award from the Indo-French Chamber of Commerce & Industry for TCS’ commitment to the French economy through sustained long-term investments in talent development, innovation, and regional growth  

Employer Brand

• Recognized by Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) with the Role Model in HR Excellence and Prize for Leadership in HR Excellence awards at the CII HR Excellence Awards, for TCS’ consistent demonstration of mature and sustainable practices across all aspects of Human Resources Management. The Role Model award has been given only twice before in the last 12 years. 

• Ranked #1 in the LinkedIn Top Companies list of the best workplaces for career growth in India. TCS topped the list in measures of ability to advance, skills growth, company stability, external opportunity, company affinity, gender diversity and spread of educational backgrounds.

• Recognized as 2022 Global Top Employer for the seventh year in a row by the Top Employers Institute.

• Ranked #3 in BT-Taggd survey of the Best Companies to Work For in India.

Innovation and IP

• TCS TwinX won the 2022 AI Excellence Award under the Product category. 

• TCS’ PredictCX won `Most Innovative Best Practice’ Award under the customer experience category at the CII DX Awards 2021. 

• TCS’ Risk Analytics Solution won Best Data Science Solution Award at the A-Team Group’s Data Management Insight Awards 2021.

Partner

• Recognized as the 2022 Americas Premier Partner of the Year by MuleSoft.

• Named the Ivalua APAC Partner of the Year 2021.

• Won SAP EMEA North Award for Service Partner Excellence 2022 for Integrated Delivery Experience. 

• Named International Partner of the Year 2021 by Ping Identity. 

• Recognized as GSI Partner of the Year 2021 by GoTo Partner Network. 

• Named Qlik's North America System Integrator of the Year.

• Won Automation Anywhere Partner of the Year 2022 awards in the categories Migration Partner - India, Knowledge Partner - India and Americas and AARI Solutions Partner - EMEA at the company’s annual Virtual Partner Summit. 

Industry Analyst Assessments

TCS was ranked a Leader in 24 competitive assessments published by leading research firms in Q4:

IFRS Financial Statements

Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive Income

For the year ended March 31, 2021, and March 31, 2022

(In millions of $, except per share data)

*Excluding legal claim provision

Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive Income

For the three-month periods ended March 31, 2021, and March 31, 2022

(In millions of $, except per share data)

Consolidated Statements of Financial Position

As of March 31, 2021, and March 31, 2022

(In millions of $)