TCS CEO N Chandrasekaran is new chairman of Tata Sons

He'll be first non-Parsi chairman of Tata Sons and will take charge from Feb 21, 2017

Tata Sons on Thursday appointed Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Chief Executive Natarajan Chandrasekaran as its new chairman. He will take over as the executive chairman from Feb. 21, Tata Sons said in a statement, adding the selection committee appointed by its board had unanimously recommended the group veteran for the job.

The decision came about three months after the $100-billion conglomerate in October ousted Cyrus Mistry and appointed Ratan Tata as its interim chairman, sparking a bitter public spat. 

"The Board of Directors of Tata Sons, at its meeting today, appointed N Chandrasekaran as Executive Chairman. This is as per the unanimous recommendation of the Selection Committee," the company said in a statement.

At TCS, Chandrasekaran would be succeeded by Rajesh Gopinathan, currently the company's chief financial officer.

Announcing his appointment, Tata Sons board said: "Mr Chandrasekaran has demonstrated exemplary leadership as the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Tata Consultancy Services.

"We believe he will now inspire the entire Tata group to realise its potential acting as leaders in their respective businesses, always in keeping with our value system and ethics and adhering with the practices of the Tata group which have stood it in good stead."

The decision to appoint him followed a five-member search committee comprising Ratan Tata, TVS Group head Venu Srinivasan, Amit Chandra of Bain Capital, former diplomat Ronen Sen and Lord Kumar Bhattacharya zeroing in on Chandrasekaran.

The search panel was given four months to find the new head of the promoter company of the major operating firms of the conglomerate, but the decision has been reached even before that.

Chandrasekaran's appointment as Tata Sons Chairman comes at a time when the company is fighting a legal battle at the National Company Law Tribunal with Mistry, who has challenged his ouster.

Yesterday, Mistry family-owned two investment firms had filed a contempt application at NCLT against move by Tata Sons to remove him as director and sought an order to restrain the company from going ahead with its planned EGM on February 6 called to remove him.

In one of the biggest board room battles in history of India Inc, Tata Sons board had removed Mistry as Chairman citing loss of faith in his leadership and for the good of the future of the group, while his predecessor Ratan Tata was brought back as an interim Chairman.

Mistry, on the other hand, had alleged that Tata and other trustees of the Tata Trusts ran alternate power centre and he was reduced to a "lame duck Chairman".

Outside his profession, Chandrasekaran is an avid photographer besides being a passionate long-distance runner who has completed several marathons around the world, including Amsterdam, Boston, Chicago, Berlin, Mumbai, New York, Prague, Stockholm, Salzburg and Tokyo.

Chandrasekaran, who joined TCS in 1987 after completing Masters in Computer Applications from Regional Engineering College, Trichy, (now National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli) in Tamil Nadu, has spent his career at the company.

He had taken over as the CEO of TCS on October 6, 2009, before which he was chief operating officer and executive director at the company. Born in 1963, Chandra, as he is fondly called by his colleagues, has been one of the youngest CEOs at the Tata group.

Chandrasekaran, 54, is often credited for the success of TCS, India’s largest IT company with a market value of Rs 4,72,636 crore as on Tuesday. The company reported revenues of Rs 23,000 crore in the September quarter and made a profit of Rs 5,958 crore, according to its BSE filings. TCS reported profits of Rs 6,778 crore on revenue of Rs 29,735 crore for the quarter to December, which was announced on Thursday, when Chandrasekaran was elevated as chairman of Tata Sons.