The reorg under new chief executive K Krithivasan abandons most elements of the restructuring put in place by predecessor Rajesh Gopinathan in April last year.
India’s biggest software developer also announced appointments to the leadership team, along with new heads for its seven business groups, according to a stock exchange filing early on Saturday. The earlier structure — an ambitious bet by Gopinathan to catapult TCS to a $50-billion company — had organised the company as per the size of clients.
It was said to have caused resentment among senior employees of the companies as well as clients. “It has become increasingly evident that TCS could deliver the best value to our customers by synergising our domain and contextual knowledge across units,” Krithivasan told employees in an email unveiling the changes on Friday. ET has seen the email.
Experts said that returning to the old organisational structure will be well received both by the clients and internally.
“The current organisation is confusing, with many competing components. This reversion to a much better organisation will greatly reduce client confusion and will aid in execution,” Peter Bender-Samuel, chief executive of consultancy firm Everest Group, told ET.
Discover the stories of your interest
ETtechSeveral Successors Appointed
ET reported on March 28 that TCS was evaluating widespread changes in its leadership as a number of key personnel were to retire in the next few months, including chief operating officer NG Subramaniam in May.
The new structure brings existing industry service units (ISUs) in line with the business groups. About 200 ISUs will be reporting to the seven business groups within the company.
Banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), earlier led by Krithivasan, has been split into two. BFSI in North America will be led by Susheel Vasudevan, and by Shankar Narayanan in all other territories. Narayanan was previously president and global head of retail, consumer packaged goods (CPG), travel and hospitality. There are about a dozen such redesignations, including that of its chief innovation officer, all effective August 1.
“Based on the discussions with customers and associates over the last couple of months, we believe TCS can deliver the best value to the customers by synergising its domain and contextual knowledge across units,” the company said in a statement. “The above changes will help in deepening customer-centricity, which is pivotal to our growth.”
The senior management personnel group appointments announced in the exchange notification on Saturday included those of Harrick Vin, Shankar Narayanan, V Rajanna, Siva Ganesan, Ashok Pai and Reguraman (Regu) Ayyaswamy.
Chief technology officer K Ananth Krishnan retires on July 31 and will be replaced by Vin, said Krithivasan’s communication.
Rajashree R, formerly chief marketing officer at TCS, is no longer a member of the group, said the exchange notification. She will move from the role on July 31 after almost a two-decade stint. TCS didn’t respond to queries related to that.
Abhinav Kumar will be the interim CMO, according to Krithivasan’s note to employees.
Also read |TCS screening candidates for C-suite rejig ahead
New Business Groups
Last year, TCS introduced four new groups — acquisitions, relationship incubation, enterprise growth and business transformation. These have been dissolved.
ET reported in March that several executives felt “disgruntled” at having to deal with smaller accounts as the bigger ones moved to other units. Customers faced difficulties in determining who the stakeholders were under the structure.
Vasudevan, who will lead the BFSI sector in North America, had been appointed last year as president of the relationship incubation group. This had managed clients below $20 million in revenue. BFSI reported over Rs 86,000 crore revenue in fiscal 2023, about 31% of the total at TCS.
Also read | Jobs scandal code of conduct violation, not systemic failure: TCS CEO K Krithivasan
Narayanan’s previous portfolio will be taken over by Krishnan Ramanujam, who had been in charge of the enterprise growth unit, which handled clients in the $20-100 million range. Retail and CPG accounted for Rs 37,500 crore revenue last fiscal, 16% of the total.
The communication, media and information services group will be led by Akhilesh Tiwari. The life sciences, healthcare, energy resources and utilities group will be led by Debashis Ghosh, who had been president of the business transformation group, which handled clients with revenue over $100 million.
Anupam Singhal will lead the manufacturing business group and the technology, software and services group will be headed by V Rajanna.
Krithivasan said the relationship incubation group will be structured under appropriate ISUs.
Also read | Big rejig: TCS names K Krithivasan CEO designate as Rajesh Gopinathan unexpectedly resigns
New Leaders, Old Units
Siva Ganesan will lead a new TCS AI cloud practice that will combine all public cloud units. Krishna Mohan will be the deputy head of this unit. Ganesan was the global head of the Microsoft business unit.
“Generative AI has captured the imagination of enterprises and consumers alike,” said Krithivasan. “All our clients and hyper-scalers are looking to generate more business value and achieve productivity leveraging cloud and GenAI. We have also made significant early investments and launched partnerships with key players in the AI space.”
Enterprise cognitive business solutions (CBO), another new service practice, will be led by Ashok Pai, who was the global head of the TCS CBO.
“While we have developed deep capability in many industry specific business processes, we have many great opportunities to grow in enterprise functions like finance and accounting services, HR procurement etc,” said Krithivasan. “With that in mind, we will be creating an enterprise CBO unit to focus on such enterprise functions.”
All business groups can leverage this practice for IT infrastructure services and domain specific business process services, he said.
