New Delhi, Dec. 17 -- Company Outsider is a weekly newsletter by Sundeep Khanna. Subscribe to Mint's newsletters to get them directly in your email inbox.

For two decades, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) was synonymous with building. While its global rivals, most notably Accenture, grew through acquisitions, TCS stuck to organic growth. Its scale and financial stability are clear evidence that the strategy has worked.

This makes its recent acquisition of US-based Coastal Cloud for a whopping $700 million a strategic inflection point. This deal is TCS's largest acquisition since 2008 when it bought Citigroup Global Services Ltd for $505 million, a clear sign that the external forces reshaping the global IT landscape have become too poten...