With tech spends expected to bounce back this year, K Krithivasan, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), is now aspiring for a double-digit growth.

Speaking about the company’s growth since he took over as the CEO in 2023, Krithivasan said, “I wouldn’t say that (we have achieved what we set out to) because you’d want to have the biggest growth year on year. We have made good progress on the margin front but on the top line front, we have not achieved the double-digit growth. I can blame this on market conditions, but we are aspiring for such growth.”

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3 developments

Stating that the company’s dealings have been strong across the board, Krithivasan attributed it to three developments: a strong pipeline in terms of deals, customer interactions that indicated some amount of returns or some discretionary spend and improvement in deal closures. He viewed this as an improvement on the decision-making front but stressed the developments as early signs.

Regarding the company’s deal with BSNL for rolling out 4G telecom network, Krithivasan described the progress as “quite well” and “on track” with close to 70,000 sites already installed. Of these, about 60,000 sites are carrying commercial traffic. He envisioned more difficulties for the last set of sites since these will be built in more remote areas.

“The reason that we got into the deal is based on the capability we built, we will be able to take it to other private players, both in India and outside of India, both on the 4G and 5G stack. Because the unique nature of the solution, which is a very indigenous solution and makes it country independent, from external influence on the critical infrastructure, we think is a very strong value proposition,” he said.

On AI impact

Talking about the impact of AI on business, Krithivasan said that it is now beginning to move the needle. “The needle is beginning to move. There are more programs going into production and the maturity of adoption has improve,” he said, adding that TCS will soon stop tracking the revenue coming exclusively from AI because the technology is becoming part of all projects

We have made good progress on the margin front but on the top line front, we have not achieved the double-digit growth. I can blame this on market conditionsK Krithivasan CEO and MD of Tata Consultancy Services