'Growth is a key to focus'

Q&A: C P Gurnani, Chief Executive Officer Mahindra Satyam

Nine months after Tech Mahindra acquired Satyam Computer Services, challenges continue to hound the management. C P Gurnani, CEO of Mahindra Satyam shares his thoughts in an interview. Edited excerpts:

Anand Mahindra had said Tech Mahindra's merger with Satyam would take a year’s time...
Putting a timeline for the merger is not feasible at this stage.

You introduced several initiatives to bring Satyam back on track. How do you rate your progress?
The initiatives undertaken involve rightsizing the organisation and a number of actions related to cost optimisation across different areas. We are implementing a customer-centric organisation that includes both sales and delivery functions interlock. We will look at optimising our operations cost further.

We continue to focus on improving our cost structures to balance the runrate we have. Operations cost improvement will continue to be a focus area. Our emphasis is on growing leaders from within.

Thanks to our delivery and relationship teams, we continue to demonstrate excellence in service delivery to our customers. This has helped increase the customers’ confidence and helped in stabilising the business.

What are some of the challenges that continue to be a concern and how do you plan to tackle them?
While some of the more pressing issues are being addressed, there are a few issues that still need our attention. Growth is a key factor to focus on while we consolidate our current strengths. Markets opening up are a good trend and we have to make investments into further building our capability and become future-ready.

Will you restate accounts by June 30 as required by the CLB?
We are working towards meeting the timelines required by the CLB. We made significant progress on corporate governance, and we will keep our shareholders informed.