BRAVING THE CHALLENGES

Tata Consultancy Services has retained the second spot in the BT500 list. With a new leader, the IT behemoth is looking to ride out global headwinds and emerge stronger

-  PRERNA LIDHOO

IN JUNE, WHEN 58-year-old K. Krithivasan took over as the MD and CEO of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest IT major and a subsidiary of Tata Sons, one of the first decisions he took was to rejig the organisation, aligning it with the $28-billion tech company’s verticals or business groups.

Krithivasan, who has been with TCS for 34 years, has also made sure that his new regime brings existing industry service units (ISUs) in line with business groups. About 200 ISUs now report to the seven business groups within the company. For Krithivasan, this “flip back” is a testament to the agility of the organisation. “We were able to quickly flip into the new structure within about three months or less. Being vertically organised was a very natural state for us. The earlier scheme of things was creating more distraction,” says Krithivasan, who was earlier President and Global Head of the Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) business, TCS’s crown jewel that contributes around 33 per cent to its revenue.

The rejig under the new chief abandons most elements of the restructuring begun by his predecessor, Rajesh Gopinathan, last April, when he had organised the company as per the size of clients. For Krithivasan, the size of the client matters, but not as much as focussing on the industry segment, a key part of TCS’s strategy that has helped it grow its profit after tax by 10 per cent year-on-year to `42,303 crore in 2022-23, even at a time when the IT industry faced headwinds globally. TCS also retained the second spot on the BT500 list, just behind Reliance Industries Ltd, even though its average market capitalisation dipped 5.3 per cent between October 1, 2022, and September 30, 2023.