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After over four deacdes at TCS, what are your future plans?
I will be moving to Chennai. There are a lot of things one does not get to do in so many years.
You have worked with two industry pioneers, F C Kohli and S Ramadorai, and now Chandrasekaran. Whom did you enjoy working with the most?
It’s been a great pleasure to work with all the three. Whoever has worked with Kohli considers him a mentor. He was an extremely demanding person. He shaped all of us and the industry. Though I had done my CA, he was the one who introduced me to activity-based costing. If you want to have a definition of a hard-working person, it has to be Ram (S Ramadorai). He completely changed the character of the company and de-centralised it. He brought people together, challenged them and personally pushed himself as well. Chandra is very aggressive, sets tough targets, and does not spare himself too.
As a CA, you had an opportunity to work across the company.
I started as a programmer working for domestic customers. My first client was Tata Electricals. In 1974, Kohli made me work with global clients. It was a different experience. I had to set up the earliest onshore-offshore system with no telephones or direct dialling. If you made an ISD call, the operator would tell you your three minutes were over. The only machine you had then was a xerox machine. The method of communication was writing. So, we would be at the post office every day to collect mail. The next big step was when Kohli asked me to go to Madras and set up a delivery centre. Then TCS had only 20 people. Today, the Chennai centre has 60,000 employees.
Of course, in 2003, I became the CFO.
Even today many believe TCS should have listed a bit earlier?
It was a decision by the owners of the company. Mr Tata has himself gone on record and said that, had we gone public at that time, investors might have suffered as valuations were down. But did it slow TCS? Also during mid-90s, we were going through our own leadership changes. I do not know if it would have been appropriate to go for listing before 2004.
Would the IPO be the most challenging period for you?
I took over the role of a CFO in February 2003 and was told we will be listing anytime soon. In terms of complete newness and our unpreparedness at that point in time, it was almost like beginning my work at TCS. Reporting of results is just one part. Results is about organisation that did not exist at that time. Our finance department was a division managed by Tata Sons.
Other than that, it was about the legal process involved in the set-up, the difficulty of communicating with different set off people, like analysts. We had to create a lot of competency, especially for currency management. Until 2003 you benefited if you were not efficient. As rupee was always depreciating. If you did not bill on time or were lethargic in collection, then rupee would have declined more. But that changed after 2003. One year pre-and-post IPO were the most trying times.
Did investors and analyst focus on margins give you sleepless night?
No. It was a conscious decision of the company. Also as a company we have taken challenges. I still remember March 2009 when Ram, Chandra and I said that we will be increasing the margins by 4 per cent during the year 2009-10. If you ask me, if we had the details of achieving this 4 per cent goal, the answer is no. But we had a goal and we managed it.
Your successor Rajesh Gopinathan has to fill in some big boots. What would be your advise to him?
Rajesh has been working with us for a long time so he knows the company and the business. This industry is going through a transformation. Its no more about looking at one aspect of the business. Its about linear and non-linear growth, its about the US, but also emerging economies. You need to keep looking at drivers for change. He will have to make sure that he runs an organisation with a portfolio. Second, the increasingly global operations play will throw new challenges. Especially the currency equation. Third, is the competency of finance officials.
