Demand for Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)'s outsourcing services is so robust the information- technology company hired 70,000 workers last fiscal year and plans to add 60,000 more this year.

Tata Consultancy projects annual sales, which have quadrupled since 2005 to $8.4 billion, will increase 20 percent a year for the "foreseeable future." That has it and rivals Infosys Technologies and Wipro hustling to find hundreds of thousands of qualified candidates as global IT purchases grow 7.1% this year to $1.7 trillion.

TCS's expertise at using low-cost IT workers to replace more expensive labour in developed countries helped it land contracts with Deutsche Bank , Hilton Worldwide and Air Liquide last fiscal year. The company, Asia's largest computer-services provider by market value, reported record annual income of $2 billion.

"As long as there's growth, you don't want to leave business on the table," said Ajoyendra Mukherjee, TCS' vice-president for human resources. "What we're trying to do is make sure the supply chain is large enough to meet our growth requirements in the future."