I felt there was no better time to quit TCS; it made most logical sense: Rajesh Gopinathan

“When I was reflecting in terms of what would be a good time, I felt that there is no better time than this. And it was important to do this before the start of the new financial year, so that the incoming CEO, in this case, Krithi, has the full runway to play with. From an immediacy perspective, just before the start of the year, so that the whole year can be owned. And from a slightly longer term perspective, we have brought the volatility of the pandemic to a fair state. We have registered very strong growth, first bouncing off the pandemic lows with 15%. And then over the last nine months also, we have still grown at 14.8% and crossed big milestones,” says Rajesh Gopinathan, CEO, TCS

I am sure TCS shareholders were mighty excited under your tenure. The company has enjoyed great growth, great PE multiples, and became a formidable force to reckon with in the Indian IT space. But even though TCS has enjoyed a very stable quarter and it has a very stable leadership, the timing of your exit is perhaps making everybody slightly nervous. At a time when the IT sector is getting bulldozed and concerns are there in the US BFSI space, do you think this could have waited?
Over the last 10 years, this is probably the most stable time we have seen in many years. Think about the financial crisis, think about the pandemic, think about everything else that went on, the war that was started off last year. So this level of volatility, is par course. And yes, there will be some ups and downs. That definitely is absolutely not a question. In fact, in times of crisis, we have always come together and stood together as a team.

When I was reflecting in terms of what would be a good time, I felt that there is no better time than this. And it was important to do this before the start of the new financial year, so that the incoming CEO, in this case, Krithi, has the full runway to play with. From an immediacy perspective, just before the start of the year, so that the whole year can be owned. And from a slightly longer term perspective, we have brought the volatility of the pandemic to a fair state.

We have registered very strong growth, first bouncing off the pandemic lows with 15%. And then over the last nine months also, we have still grown at 14.8% and crossed big milestones. We crossed 7 billion, and we are now at a run rate of 28 billion. When you look forward, I do not think there is going to be another period where there will be significant difference in that stability. So it goes back to that question, why now? I have asked myself, if not now, will there be a better time? And the frank answer was, I could not think that there could be anything better and therefore it made most logical sense.

When did you inform Chandra? What was his first reaction? And how did it go through? And what is next for you now everybody is curious about that?
I have been having discussions with Chandra off and on. And of course, when there is an immediate problem, we always focus on that. But in moments of retrospection, I have always been telling him that, at some point I want to do it so that has been an ongoing dialogue. The immediate one was of course, that as I said and I think this is the way it happens with everybody, probably that one day you get up and then you say that, okay, we have thought about it and spoken about it long enough.

It is better to pull the trigger as it were. So that happened just a week or so ago. But it is a conversation that has been ongoing. What next is first, I have to make sure that the transition happens smoothly. And with Krithi being there, I do not think that is a challenge at all. But I owe it to all our customers, all our colleagues, our employees, and all stakeholders to make sure that I am there for whatever time that Krithi needs and if nothing, it might be even symbolic. But I definitely have no plans to skimp on that and will be available to Krithi 100%, not just during this transition period, at any point in time in future.

After that, I want to take some downtime and spend some time with family, sit back and then think, you know, yes many ideas are there but now that the trigger has been pulled, I need to start crystallizing what those are. And it would not have been appropriate for me to go down that path while I was doing something as important as this, and which required more than 100% of my attention all the time. So that is the plan. So probably we will get to catch up and have that cup of coffee that we have been always talking about. And I am looking forward to some downtime.