Railways to issue Rs 2K cr tech deals; TCS, HCL in race

The Indian Railways has Rs 2,000 crore worth contracts in store including a deal earlier bagged by Mahindra Satyam. CNBC-TV18's Kritika Saxena learns that TCS, HCL are leading in the race for the bid.

Sources tell us that the Indian Railways has Rs 2,000 crore worth of IT deals on the block. We learn that Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and HCL Technologies are the frontrunners for all of the deals. There were a large number of IT companies who had bid for a number of these projects but TCS and HCL are the frontrunners.

The first deal is a Rs 100 crore deal which is for the software development of locomotive management systems (LMS). This LMS contract was earlier bagged by Mahindra Satyam, but since Mahindra Satyam could not provide its financial details right now, the project was cancelled by the Indian railways.

Now, TCS and HCL, while they are the frontrunners for this bid, had not contended at all owing to the fact that it is Rs 100 crore deal.

The other deals that are on the anvil are larger deals. The second one is Rs 450 crore deal which is for a software aided train scheduling management systems which will allow real time train scheduling and management by the help of a software solution.

There are three other projects on the anvil, the first one is Rs 450 crore project and two others are worth Rs 500 crore each which would be coming up in next three-four months. The Indian Railways, however, could not comment on the perspective of the deals and company policies did not allow TCS or HCL to give comments on the same.