Porsche sold MHP for about a quarter of what it promised to spend with the buyer

Divide the commitment by the price and the structure explains itself. The €1.25 billion of contracted work is roughly 3.9 times the €320 million enterprise value TCS is paying ^{[1] [1] [2]}. Averaged flat across the term, that is €250 million a year ^[2], or about 34 percent of MHP's €742 million turnover in calendar 2025 ^{[3] [4]}. Measured against the same turnover, the price is about 0.43 times revenue ^[4], roughly €71,000 for each of the approximately 4,500 employees who transfer at close ^{[5] [7]}. On a book that shrank about 11 percent in a year, the asset is the cheaper half of the transaction ^[4].

The largest number in the deal is also the least specified. The commitment is written to TCS and MHP jointly, and neither party has broken out the split ^[2]. Neither has said what the €1.25 billion buys in practical terms, or which Porsche systems the planned AI Mobility Centre of Excellence will take on first ^{[11] [10]}. K. Krithivasan's framing, that the two will "industrialize AI at scale for Porsche" ^[18], is a direction of travel rather than a scope of work.

A skeptic reads this as a captive being handed over with its existing workload relabelled as a mandate, and that reading is fair as far as it goes. A consultancy owned by a carmaker already has a dependable order book; what changed here is that the order book became contractual, and therefore legible to a buyer who cannot rely on ownership to hold the volume in place. Porsche's intention to divest MHP was public in June 2025, more than a year before signature ^[9], and that interval is a reasonable proxy for how long it takes to make captive revenue portable.

For Porsche the trade is stated plainly by the documents: a 4,500-person cost line converts to cash now ^{[7] [1]}, against a five-year floor under its own spending with a single supplier ^[2]. For TCS the German consolidation is the easy part, since Lünendonk's most recent ranking had it fifth in IT consulting and systems integration with MHP immediately behind ^[12], and MHP arrives with about 300 clients reaching into aerospace, defence, energy and the public sector ^[8]. The harder question belongs to next year rather than this week: whether contracted volume can be grown, or only delivered.

The tape offers context rather than a verdict. Indian IT clients have paused spending while AI reworks the outsourcing model, and the Nifty IT index has fallen nearly 20 percent since the start of 2026 against just over 7 percent for the Nifty 50 ^[15]. TCS reported annualized AI revenue of $2.6 billion in its June 2026 quarter, up 13.6 percent quarter on quarter ^[14]. On Aug. 25 its shares opened about ₹21 above the previous ₹2,305 close, then traded down to an intraday low near ₹2,262, on a session where the Sensex shed roughly 240 points amid crude prices and U.S. sanctions on Iran ^[16]. A single session carrying that much unrelated weight tells you very little about a five-year contract.