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Marathon man sprints to head Tata Group
Natarajan Chandrasekaran’s phenomenal three-decade journey from an intern at TCS, to the head of the company, and now as Chairman of Tata Sons, the holding company of the USD 103-billion Group, in a way represents the tenacity of pursuing his passion of distance-running.
Mumbai
The 54-year-old marathoner joined TCS — then one among several Group companies — in 1987 straight out after completing a Master’s in Computer Applications from the Trichy Regional Engineering College in Tamil Nadu and rose through the ranks to become its Managing Director and Chief Executive in 2009.Â
The intervening period of over two decades saw the country’s emergence as an IT superpower, TCS dislodging rivals to become the numero uno company in the sector and also become the Tata Group’s crown jewel as other businesses like steel and auto suffered.Â
The results seem to have paid-off for Chandra, as he is popularly known. He is the first non-shareholder and a truly non-family person to chair the group, and seems to have piped others including Ratan Tata’s stepbrother Noel Tata, group company JLR’ Ralph Speth, PepsiCo’s Indira Nooyi, ex-Vodafone global chief Arun Sarin among others.Â
His big moment in the group can arguably be becoming executive assistant to then MD and CEO S Ramadorai, and being groomed to becoming the company head on the boss’ retirement. Chandra navigated the company through a lot of ups and downs and dislodging bellwether Infosys and to become the largest company by marketcap with of close to Rs 5 trillion, and the largest profit centre for the group.Â
As the head of the Tata Group, he inherits a slew of problems across diverse sectors for which the conglomerate is in the news since October 24 last year when it removed Cyrus Mistry as the Chairman. Experience gained in steering TCS, which delivers over 80 per cent of the Group’s profits as also other positives like the potential of JLR will be of help for him. Being a group man will also help as he is deeply rooted in the ethos of the century-old group, unlike Mistry who had come to the group from outside.Â
It can be noted that along with JLR’s Ralph Speth, Chandra was appointed to the Tata Sons Board on October 25. Since then, he has been a regular at the group HQs Bombay House, and has been often seen with Ratan Tata. In the past three months under the septuagenarian interim Chairman Ratan Tata, Chandra was the chosen one to represent the salt-to-software Group’s case before global investors. This work paid-off as most of the institutional shareholders either supported the group or abstained from voting at a slew of shareholder meets to dismiss Mistry from directorship of group companies, eventually leading Mistry to give up on the fight.Â
Chandra has been active in voicing the USD 150-billion software industry’s wishes and also serves as a member on the board of the Reserve Bank.Â
Born in 1963 in Tamil Nadu, he lives in Mumbai with his wife, Lalitha, and son Pranav. A technopreneur known for his ability to make big bets on new technology, Chandra has been driving TCS’ strong positioning in the emerging digital economy with a suite of innovative digital products and platforms for enterprises, some of which have since scaled into sizeable new businesses.Â
Under his leadership, TCS has generated consolidated revenues of USD 16.5 billion in 2015-16 and is the largest software company in terms of revenue, and also the largest private sector employer in the country with over 3.78 lakh headcounts today. With over Rs 4.6 trillion in m-cap (Thursday), TCS is also the most valued company in the country. It should not come as a surprise that the appointment came within hours of TCS delivering a profit growth of 10.9 per cent for the December quarter which is faster than the industry average despite its size.
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