At TCS, CEO is the first among equals, says Krithi Krithivasan

Presence is across geographies, any downside hits us, says Krithi Krithivasan CEO-designate, TCS

Amid global uncertainties and banking turmoil in the US, India’s largest IT services firm, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), has announced changes in leadership. Krithi Krithivasan will take over as chief executive officer (CEO) on June 1. In his first interview, he speaks to Shivani Shinde on challenges, near-term growth opportunities, and his priorities. Edited excerpts:

You will take over at a time when the industry is going through challenges. How do you see the macro impacting TCS?

This is my 34th year with TCS. I am long-term positive on the company, and we have seen it grow from strength to strength. This is not the first time such a crisis has emerged. Rather, I would say we have seen worse times too. But each time there has been a crisis, we have overcome that and come up with newer solutions and offers for customers. To give an instance of Covid, our customer intimacy improved because they (customers) liked the way we interacted with them and responded to the challenges … We are on a solid foundation.

Will it be right to assume that the CEO tenure at TCS is coming down?

I do not think we planned it this way. If Rajesh (Gopinathan) had not resigned (as CEO), he would have served longer. The same goes for Chandra (N Chandrasekaran, chairman, Tata Sons). I do not want to make a comment on the CEO tenure. All of us have enjoyed the growth of the company and one of us gets to be CEO. I believe the CEO at TCS is first among equals. Most of us have put in 15-20 years at the company. You have to see the camaraderie we bring to work.

If we look at the past few years, TCS’ base has grown substantially but the growth pace has been going down. Comments.

Our size is an asset. Some companies that are bigger than us are also growing well. When you look at our business model, it’s completely asset-light. We do not get into large acquisitions or large asset-heavy deals. Our returns on equity are probably the best and we are mindful of our responsibility to our shareholders. Sometimes our growth rate is a tad lower than others’. It is also a fact that we have a presence in almost all geographies, so when there is a downside it hits us more. But if you take last year, among the Indian companies we did reasonably well. If you take even the 10-year period, we have done better than competition. We believe our business model is very strong, and the way we take care of our associates is important. The key component advantage we have is the tenure of our associates. We have over 120,000 associates who have over 10 years of experience and we value all of them as assets.

In an uncertain macro and fast-changing tech landscape, what opportunities do you see for TCS?

Every time a new tech comes in, there are a set of people who will predict that this will be the end of Indian IT and every time the Indian IT industry and overall technology providers have proven to be resilient and innovative and each of these technologies in a way creates a larger opportunity for society. Overall value creation in the world keeps increasing. The only thing we need to focus on is skill sets because what we need will continue to change. We are well positioned because as an organisation TCS has been training at such a high pace that I know we will be ready as these technologies evolve and the new use cases start to emerge.

What are the challenges?

I don’t want to think of challenges but tasks that are before us. As people grow, we need to keep the engineering culture alive. After a few years, people have a tendency to become managers. How we ensure that they continue to stay close to technology, stay close to customers, think on behalf of customers, and gain the customer mindshare continuously -- this is my focus area.

In terms of your immediate focus, what would you call out?

The immediate focus is meeting customers and understanding their pain points, and what we can do for them. The second is meeting associates … our core pillars are customers and associates. Other than these two, our priority, as Rajesh (Gopinathan) has laid out, is client mindshare. We have over 1,000 active clients. Of these 100-200 are really where we make the maximum revenue. Ensuring that we remain relevant to them, increasing the depth and relationship focus is the most important priority item on my list.

On future technology like generative artificial intelligence (AI), currently our customers are spending a lot on cloud, data, and AI/machine learning. We too have invested. How you increase the penetration and participation for using these services into our customers is going to be our second priority.

Third is mindshare gain. We have a good presence but we need to have mindshare gain commensurate with that presence. My focus will be on how the contextual masters create growth and transformation opportunities proactively for customers.

Q4 FY23 was affected due to the US slowdown and of course the banking turmoil. How long do you see this continuing?

I believe in North America the fundamentals of banking were strong. The challenges came in due to mark-to-market pressure and underlying bonds losing their value. And then came the cascading impact. Otherwise fundamentally the sector did not have any problem. Rather, the issue was in the insurance vertical, which was linked to the China crisis. But that is easing from this quarter onwards. My view is that once things settle down, they will start investing in future projects because technology will continue to be a competitive advantage. I do not have a time frame, however, to share when this settles down.

What’s the message from employees?

We have always valued employees as the most important asset. Going ahead, the investment will be on how we can build career opportunities for them. We will continue to enhance their capacity training and focus on their career. These are the values that TCS has always focused on.

Gopinathan had said TCS could be a $50-billion company by 2030. Do you agree?

I do not think we have a target. The only thing that Rajesh had said was in due course we would reach there. The only thing he said then was: Are we reaching there fighting fit or are we reaching there huffing and puffing? It’s a good number but then $51 billion is also a good number.