HCL Software head Darren Oberst quits the firm

Darren Oberst, head of HCL Software, which accounts for about 12 percent of revenue, has quit the firm to pursue other opportunities.

Oberst joined HCL in 2014 as the head of corporate development and moved to lead this group in 2016.

“Interim leadership will take over this week, and in parallel, the Company will interview candidates internally and externally to lead this business segment. With the change, HCL also plans to align its entire suite of products and platforms allowing for greater synergies,” the company said in a statement.

HCL Software includes select IBM products that the company acquired in 2018 for $1.8 billion and is one of the key focus areas for the company. The segment growth declined in the last quarter by 8 percent sequentially due to some delay in deal closures.

C Vijayakumar, CEO, HCL Tech, said during the earnings call last month, “There was a blip that can be attributed to delays in closing some large deals, which is likely to be done in the next quarter. Usually, the product business has a lot of licence sales of our products and a big part of our revenue gets booked and recognised towards the end of the quarter. I want to assure you the core of this business is intact, though we overall expect this year to be flat to one person growth compared to the low single-digit growth that we had shared earlier,”

During a recent interaction with Moneycontrol, Vijayakumar, said, “If you look at the products and platforms business, a large part of it is what we had acquired from IBM. Now, there are a lot of puts and takes when you do a big divestiture. This includes some one-time revenue, some settlements and things like that. So, I think if you do this comparison, it’s kind of declining for the last two-three quarters. For the full year, we have already said that it would be in low single digits, but we are looking at flat to 1 percent growth. Many products have very strong growth products in this portfolio. So, we remain confident. If you move into the next year, we are optimistic about the business trajectory here."