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TCS: With you for the Long Run™

Brand Finance
01 May 2025

Tata Consultancy Services now sponsors 14 of the world's most prestigious marathons and racing events, including the TCS London Marathon, TCS New York City Marathon, and TCS Sydney Marathon.

Abhinav Kumar, Global Chief Marketing Officer, TCS, discusses the strategy behind these sponsorships and how it has contributed to the TCS brand.

Interview with Abhinav Kumar.

Abhinav Kumar
Global Chief
Marketing Officer,
Tata Consultancy
Services

TCS is now a major supporter of Marathons worldwide. What inspired you to pursue this strategy?

We are extremely proud of the role we play as a partner and as a sponsor of leading marathons worldwide. With our recent appointment as the Official AI & Technology partner of the Schneider Electric Paris Marathon, we now partner with 14 iconic running events across the world, including five of the top seven races (which are called the Majors) – New York, London, Chicago, Boston and Sydney.

Historically, our sponsorship strategy was diversified, with involvement in Cricket, Formula 1, Cycling, and other areas. However, about 15 years ago, we shifted our focus towards marathons, beginning with our partnership with the Tata Mumbai Marathon in 2008, followed by the TCS Amsterdam Marathon in 2011.

As we activated behind the sport, we found immense value in it. Marathons are a great way to elevate your brand at the city level on a large scale, to emotionally engage your communities as athletes (unlike mere spectators in other sports), and to showcase your business’ capabilities. It’s a growing and highly inclusive sport - all you need is a pair of shoes and good weather to run, and sometimes not even those! The number of running events - including marathons, ultras and short distance events - have doubled in just the last five years, as have participants. We see exciting growth ahead for the sport and look forward to making our own contribution.

How does being associated with Marathons help your brand?

Our work with marathons provides our brand with various value streams. For many of our stakeholders, we have become synonymous with it, and I often joke that my own role – CMO – stands for Chief Marathon Officer. This strategy has been one of the key contributors to our brand value growth, which you at Brand Finance assessed to have grown from USD2.1 billion in 2010 to USD21.3 billion in 2025, a staggering rise which our marketing team is very proud of.

This has made our brand more well known and admired in key cities across the world, where we have a concentration of our clients and employees. In 2024, 12,000 of our clients and colleagues participated in the 14 races we partner with. Being there as a brand and enabling this special moment generates tremendous goodwill for us. Many clients indicate that their respect for the company grew after experiencing a run with us and witnessing the impact we make in the community through these marathons.

They also enable us to showcase our technology prowess, such as the “Future Athlete” project, which has built the world’s first Digital Twin of the Human Heart for a pro runner. Using data analytics and AI, the initiative helps athletes to better understand their cardiovascular system and how to run better. Ultimately, this technology aims to help consumers to improve their health, make early diagnoses and take preventive action to save lives.

What role does TCS play in furthering the impact of marathons?

We have been working with our partners who organise these marathons on two major fronts: engaging the community and improving sustainability. Our partner races generated USD280 million for charities last year by activating communities and runners around causes like cancer research and children’s health. The TCS Mini London Marathon engages 18,000 children (ages 7–16) from UK schools, running 1–2 miles on the official track a day before the marathon. They earn medals with pride while generating funds for their schools' sports and education programmes. Most importantly, being introduced to running at a young age helps healthy habits and stronger awareness of health and well-being.

On sustainability, we partnered with the Council for Responsible Sport in the US to create an app called “ReScore” which we offer free of charge to all races. This app helps them measure their carbon footprint, their sources of renewable energy, total waste, and the circularity of materials in their supply chain. By measuring sustainability and implementing stronger strategies, the TCS Toronto Marathon has achieved the highest “evergreen” level, while the TCS NYC and TCS London marathons have earned the “Gold” standard.

Marathons are powerful city ambassadors and huge economic drivers. If we can make them more engaging, raise more for charities, and be environmentally friendly, then I would consider our service to be complete.

What are the key messages you wish to communicate through your marathon sponsorships?

We firmly believe that marathons are a great metaphor for business and even for how one should live our lives. There is so much inspiration to draw from marathons – be it the ability to think long distance/long term, the resilience to go the distance irrespective of barriers, the discipline to train and perform, the camaraderie of running together, and more.

If we applied these to business strategy, we would run our businesses much better than we do today. With that, we have created a brand campaign called With you for the Long Run™, which encapsulates these thoughts and brings them to life around the marathons that we partner with.

The phrase is also a perfect depiction of what our brand and our company stand for – long term customer relationships, completing complex transformations at scale, and applying innovation fast to improve performance. It is also our brand promise to all stakeholders – clients, investors and employees - to be with them for the long run and create lasting value.

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