The Noida-headquartered IT services firm, which has struggled over the past few quarters, told the stock exchanges on Monday that he has “decided to leave HCL Technologies to pursue another opportunity”.
Oberst was part of the founding team f HCL Software. In his last role, he was responsible for the product development, sales, operations, and strategy of the division that contributed 11-12% of the company’s nearly $10 billion in annual revenue. He had joined HCL Technologies in 2014 as head of corporate development and moved to lead HCL Software in 2016.
“The interim leadership will take over this week and, in parallel, the company will interview candidates internally and externally to lead this business segment,” the company’s BSE filing read. “With the change, HCL also plans to align its entire suite of products and platforms allowing for greater synergies.”
During the presentation of the recently declared September quarter earnings, HCL Tech had noted that its products & platforms (P&P) business — especially the IBM business — had a lot of one-time payouts and settlements over the past year and certain product segments were discontinued within it. It reported a dip of 8% over the quarter and 5.5% dip over the past year in revenue growth. P&P growth was impacted due to delays in closure of certain deals during the quarter.
“We had one very large contract that slipped and then a number of other small to mid-sized deals so it was a handful,” Oberst had stated during the earnings presentation. “None of those deals have yet closed. They are all work in progress. None of them have been lost either. So, we are still working on them.”
Net profit of the company rose 1.7% sequentially in the September quarter on the back of revenue that increased 2.9% to Rs 20,655 crore, missing street estimates. Analysts have suggested that the company has slipped on execution in the recent quarters although it has performed well through the pandemic.
“Our fundamental book of business on the product side remains intact. Our hypothesis of modernising these products and getting them into the leaders quadrant in various industry analyst reports, it’s very much on track,” C Vijayakumar, CEO of HCL Technologies, had stated during the company’s earnings call.
P&P is a strategic business of HCL Technologies and is backed by founder Shiv Nadar.
