3 Virtues That Make Chandrasekaran an Obvious Choice as Leader of India's $103-billion Conglomerate At 53, Chandra is the youngest CEOs of the Tata Group till date and holds more than a score of laurels in his hat.
By Aashika Jain
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The cat is out of the bag. Meeting the 4-month target to appoint a new Chairman of Tata Sons, Natarajan Chandrasekaran has been appointed the group chairman of the $103 billion conglomerate.
Chandrasekaran, popularly called Chandra, served as the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Tata Consultancy Services, the country's largest IT firm by revenue for the last 8 years.
Here are the 3 virtues that make Chandra an obvious choice as a leader of the business empire.
Insider & Veteran
Chandra, who was appointed an Additional Director on the Tata Sons Board last October, is seen as a successful global figure.
A Tata insider and veteran, Chandra has served as the Chairperson of the IT Industry Governors' at the WEF, Davos in 2015-16, played an active role in the Indo-US & India-UK CEO Forums and is a part of India's business taskforces for Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Japan and Malaysia.
Chandra has also served as the chairman of NASSCOM, the apex trade body for IT services firms in India in 2012-13.
Created Value
Under Chandra, TCS became the country's largest software services exporter and the largest private sector employer in India with 350,000 staff members.
TCS counts global MNCs such as GE, JP Morgan, WalMart, Cisco and Vodafone among its clients and was rated as the world's most powerful brand in IT Services in 2015 and the Global Top Employer by the Top Employers Institute across 24 countries according to Wikipedia.
Dominant Profits Year After Year
At 53, Chandra is the youngest CEOs of the Tata Group till date and holds more than a score of laurels in his hat. Chandra has spent his career in TCS having joined the company in 1987.
Under the leadership of Chandra, TCS accounted for over two-thirds of the combined market value of all Tata group companies. The company jumped three fold from INR 30,000 crore ($6.34 billion) in 2010 to INR 1.09 lakh crore ($16.5 billion) in FY16.
In an unprecedented move last year, former Tata Sons Chairman Cyrus Mistry was ousted from the company. A five-man panel that included Ratan Tata had been tasked with finding a new chairman.
Tata Sons is the promoter of the major operating Tata companies and holds significant shareholdings in these companies. Tata companies are commonly referred to as the Tata group and the Chairman of Tata Sons as Chairman of the Tata group.
About 66 percent of the equity capital of Tata Sons is held by philanthropic trusts endowed by members of the Tata family. The largest of these trusts are the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust and the Sir Ratan Tata Trust, which were created by the families of the sons of Jamsetji Tata, the Founder.
