'The day my heart is not 100% committed': TCS's Gopinathan explains exit

Rajesh Gopinathan had been thinking about stepping down as CEO and MD of Tata Consultancy Services and doing something else for quite some time. He even discussed this with N Chandrasekaran, his mentor and chairman of Tata Sons, but the priority always remained solving the problem at hand.

“There is nothing more challenging than doing the quarter-after-quarter performance update, and making sure that performance keeps up. I have been doing that for 10 years and I enjoyed it but sometimes when you reach a milestone, you start thinking what’s next,” shared Gopinathan at a press briefing.

A person who has always measured what he says, Gopinathan was in a relaxed mood and spoke candidly. “I was sure of one thing: The day my heart is not 100 per cent committed to doing this work, I will leave…and that was the trigger point. I owe it to TCS, all of us owe it to TCS. This seat was given in trust and I respect the seat and it is something that I do not take lightly. It is not a seat for me to sit and think of my future plans,” he said.

Though Gopinathan, who will leave the company in September, is yet to decide on what he will do next, the immediate task at hand is a smooth transition at the company. K Krithivasan, a TCS veteran, is the CEO designate.

“I owe it to all our customers, colleagues, and employees… I’ll be available to Krithi 100 per cent not only now but also whenever he needs me. After that, I want to take some downtime with my family, sit back, and think,” he said.

Gopinathan said TCS is the market leader in its space, and has given industry-leading results. Immediately after the pandemic, the company grew 15 per cent and in the first nine months of FY23, TCS clocked 14.8 per cent growth.

Asked about the timing of the exit, especially when there is uncertainty about the macroeconomy, he said: “Last 10 years, this is perhaps the most stable time. This level of volatility is par for the course and there will be ups and down. In times of crisis, we have come together and worked as a team. It was important to do this before the start of the financial year, so that the incoming CEO has the full runway to play.”

On a lighter note, he said since his campus days, he has never worked on his resume. “I never wrote my resume after my campus, my batchmates will know about it. On campus, we used to have a repository, one great learning that you have, one failure that you have. But I don’t have any practice doing that in the last 28 years. I haven’t thought about it. TCS has been integral to who I am. I never had any second thoughts looking back at my journey. I won’t have done anything else differently,” he added.