HITTING THE REFRESH BUTTON AT L&T

S.N. Subrahmanyan is increasing the share of services-financial & IT-in order to increase the margins of the conglomerate.

- P.B. JAYAKUMAR

IN FY15, S.N. Subrahmanyan, then deputy managing director of Larsen & Toubro (L&T) and seen as a likely successor of chairman and managing director A.M. Naik, got an unexpected order from his boss. “Go to U.S. and Europe and learn about IT.” Sekharipuram Narayanan Subrahmanyan, fondly called SNS, was heading L&T’s largest business—infrastructure. “I am a civil engineer. Until then, IT had no role in my work and life,” he says. Subrahmanyan spent a year in the U.S. and Europe and met IT experts and CEOs and CXOs of several

Fortune 500 companies. “He was also managing the infrastructure business over phone and mail,” says Naik. After returning to India, he rushed to Naik and explained how IT could catapult L&T to new heights. “Implement it in engineering & construction,” was Naik’s answer.

In next two years, he and his team digitised over 13,000 assets in material supply chain, workman management, recruitment, quality management, predictive maintenance, safety apps, material pilferages, project progress, etc. L&T does 800-1,000 projects at a time, directly employing two lakh, apart from another three lakh labourers. “I could implement one of the largest digital programmes in this space in the world and in a way we became an IT company doing infrastructure work,” says Subrahmanyan, who has been managing director and CEO since July 1, 2017; he took charge as chairman and managing director on October 1.