AS Lakshminarayanan shortlisted to head Tata Communications

Mumbai | Bengaluru: Amur Swaminathan Lakshminarayanan, president and CEO of Tata Consultancy Services Japan, is said to have been shortlisted to head Tata Communications, top officials aware of the development said. He is set to take the place of Vinod Kumar, who resigned abruptly as CEO of the loss-making Tata Communications in early July.

Lakshminarayanan is considered one of Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran’s top lieutenants in TCS and had been deputed to Tokyo in 2014 to head the company’s Japan business after it acquired Mitsubishi Corp’s IT arm.

Lakshminarayanan, 58, joined TCS in 1983 and was instrumental in expanding the company’s telecom business. He is known as an executive who can help build businesses. He developed the company’s IT service business in the UK.

“He has experience with telecom and he has a track record of working well with the existing management and growing the business,” a TCS executive told ET. TCS and Tata Communications did not respond to a query from ET.

Kumar resigned after Tata Communications, weighed by debt of Rs 8,527.3 crore, posted a loss of Rs 82.37 crore in the year ended March, its third straight year in the red. He had worked with the company since 2004.

Tata Sons is now considering combining some businesses of the digital infrastructure company with TCS and selling the rest. The government, which holds a 26% stake in Tata Communications, appears to be on the same page as the salt-to-steel conglomerate.

“Some similar services of Tata Communications may be merged with TCS and the rest of the business sold as separate business ventures. But it may not be an easy plan to execute, given the government shareholding in the company,” said one person.

Tata Communications owns and operates a sub-sea fibre network that carries about 30% of the world’s internet routes. Its services including cloud platforms, real-time connectivity and hosted data centres are currently offered together with software company TCS.

Kumar had put in his papers for personal reasons and the board accepted his resignation effective end of July 5.