Tata Consultancy Services is shutting down its Morocco unit as it could not get enough outsourcing volumes from local and European clients.

TCS Morocco is in the process of being liquidated, Rajesh Gopinathan, Chief Financial Officer of city-based TCS, told BusinessLine recently.

“We had looked at Morocco as a near shore centre for the French-speaking countries in Europe, but we could not get enough scale to sustain operations. While business operations were ramped down a couple of years ago, the legal process of winding up is on,” he said. TCS’ goal when it had started the 500-seater centre in Casablanca eight years ago was to hire over 1,000 people.

Sources said getting enough people with French speaking skillsets also proved to be a challenge for the company. Moreover, Moroccan enterprises had not opened up to the prospects of working with a foreign services provider, they added.

Gopinathan said: “For the first time in our history, we are exiting a country.” Morocco was an early stage investment for TCS. “We are more careful about scale today.”

He added that TCS’ unit in France will turn profitable this year, aided by its 2013 acquisition of IT services firm Alti. The ₹530-crore acquisition had given TCS access to a larger pool of France-based clients. TCS France had reported a net loss of ₹16.22 crore for the previous fiscal on a revenue of ₹449 crore.