We'll Be Stronger With A Holistic Business Model

Tata Consultancy Services(TCS), India's largest software services company, is in the process of executing the country's biggest buyback offer.

- Stuti Roy

The Rs 16,000 crore buyback offer is likely to compel its peers to follow suit. Mumbai headquartered TCS has often been in the forefront of the IT industry in setting trends and precedents.

It is now the turn of Rajesh Gopinathan, the new CEO of TCS, to maintain the over Rs 1,07,500-crore company's leadership position. Mr Gopinathan, the former CFO and vice-president of TCS, succeeds Natarajan Chandrasekaran, who has taken over as chairman of Tata Sons in February. In a wide-ranging interview, Mr Gopinathan, 46, an electrical and electronics engineer from NIT Trichy and MBA graduate from IIM Ahmedabad, speaks about his priorities, challenges ahead and his vision for the company five years hence.

How have the last few days been since you took over this new role?

It has been a nice start. A few of my colleagues got together and welcomed me. It was nice of Chandra (Mr Chandrasekaran) to drop in on the first day itself and make sure that I was comfortable on day one. So, it was a nice touch. We have been on a great transition as it were from January onwards. The day per se is big for me, but for TCS, it's just another day.

So, what are on your priority list for TCS?

We are quite well positioned when we think of it from a customer's as well as an internal employee's perspective. We have been investing ahead of the curve on a whole new stack of technologies that are coming about. Increasingly, the message that is coming from customers is that they are increasing their investment in technology. They want to engage with technology service partners who have the strength, scale and diversity to help them drive productivity. So, that is the big opportunity, and we have the customer relationships, talent, people with the customer domain and contextual knowledge, and we have been investing in training and building that aid learning platforms to actually get it down.