BENGALURU: After Rajesh Gopinathan, outgoing TCS CEO and MD, said in a media briefing that he might be the one great advisor the world is waiting for, speculation is rife that Gopinathan might continue with Tata Group as an advisor.
Agency reports quoted Tata Group sources on Tuesday and said that there have been discussions between Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran and Gopinathan about the latter’s engagement with Tata Group in an advisory role after his notice period ends on September 15.
At a press conference when asked whether he will take on an advisory role, Gopinathan explained, “Long before I owned a car, I used to walk on the road with an attitude towards car owners -you’ve bought a car, not the road, and I used to walk however I wanted. When you start driving a car, you have a different perspective of pedestrians.”
“When it comes to advisors, when I was in an operational role, I used to hate advisors of all forms completely. It’ll be interesting now, I might be the one great advisor the world is waiting for. I have to develop different perspectives,” he added.
Though TCS declined to comment on this, analysts lauded Gopinathan’s track record and his long association (22 years) with the company. Meanwhile, Kotak Equities said following recent developments around the bankruptcy of Silver gate, SVB and Signature Bank in the US and UBS-CS merger in Europe will likely lead to further curtailing of discretionary tech spends in the near term.
This will likely impact growth for Indian IT in the first half of FY24, and also bring down overall growth for FY2024. However, it said that TCS and Infosys are better positioned. It said BFS exposure (excluding insurance) for TCS stands at around 29% and Infosys at 26%. While Europe BFSI exposure for Infosys stood at 4.9%, TCS Europe exposure was at 13%.
Incoming CEO K Krithivasan’s current role is President and Global Head of the Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) Business Unit at TCS. BFSI is one of the largest portfolios for TCS.
Motilal Oswal Financial Services said given Krithi’s long tenure at TCS (34 years), they expect the company to maintain its operational performance intact.
Passing on the baton