LTIMindtree relatively smaller to caution growth as a concern: L&T CFO R Shankar Raman

R Shankar Raman

LTIMindtree's integration has been smooth. Since the company is relatively small, it can meet its targets to grow in double digits for FY24, L&T Chief Financial Officer R Shankar Raman told Moneycontrol.

The two companies, which were merged in November last year, finished integration procedures on April 1. However, while the IT industry has been seeing significant headwinds in the last few months, the company has also seen high-profile exits.

Commenting on the same, Raman said that the exits are small in number compared to the overall resource pool.

“If you consider a total resource pool of 95,000 people between the two companies, I think the exits are smaller in number. This is something we were anticipating but are happy to report that the outcome is far better than what could have been our worst-case scenario,” he said.

For Raman, exits seem to be a way of life in the IT industry, unlike in industries where employees work for decades in the same company.

“It’s very rare that the same team continues for a long length of time. If you typically take by contrast L&T — you’ll have people working for 25-30-35 years quite easily. You don’t get that kind of profiling in IT. In IT, our orientation should be to get the right skill pool for a certain project or set of projects, and make sure there is no exit midway to create disruption in that project,” he added.

LTIMindtree CEO Debashis Chatterjee, too, earlier told Moneycontrol that exits are normal when two organisations come together, and not worrying as people step up and take charge of those roles.

While the larger IT players such as TCS, Infosys, and others have signalled caution and said there have been ramp-downs by clients, LTIMindtree has guided for double-digit growth in FY24

“Their assessment of sizing, opportunities, and delta growth is like our infra growth — since the base is so large, to grow at 20 percent is a huge task. So, these IT companies are possibly having scale as an issue when it comes to delta percentages,” he said.

He also believes that clients have not pushed back at the level at which larger players have been calling out.

“Business model transition programs ought to be completed and cannot be abandoned. The question is, how much of the discretionary spend will they commit going forward? As per our base, we do see clients possibly remaining engaged with us for the growth we are staring at,” he said.

Raman believes that the opportunities which larger IT companies might not grab due to respective filters, will make inroads for LTIMindtree and lead to growth.

Watch the full interview here: