While there is a significant delay in terms of closures of deals, paradoxically, the deal pipeline and order inflow are very healthy, said CEO and MD, LTIMindtree, in an interaction with FE.
Citing concerns about delay in decision making from clients side, Chatterjee, said, “We expected much more activities in deals wins in Q1 and that is what we have raised it as a concern. There is a significant delay in terms of decision making which we witnessed in Q1.”
He added, that apart from that the company also faced challenges in some of its BFS (Banking and financial services) clients. “They have put a freeze ie that they are not onboarding new resources into those engagements. We expected that these concerns will get over in Q1, but it didn’t get over and continues to Q2 as well.”
Last quarter, LTIMindree expected to grow in double digit. Chatterjee said that company never give guidance and it was just the confidence on deal pipelines that made it to anticipate of double digit growth in FY24.
“We had given a double digit growth guidance for FY24, but obviously for the challenges we are facing now, it’s probably very difficult to get to that level. In spite of all challenges, we are still confident of profitable growth and our growth should be in the leaders’ quadrant as far as the industry is concerned. So rather than wanting to have a specific growth number, we want to have a leader quadrant growth.”
Speaking about integration of two companies into LTIMindtree, he said, “The real integration started after Nov 14, 2022. That’s the day 1.
Till March (for about 4.5 months), we spent all the time on integration. Day 2 was when all our systems and processes and the harmonisation got completed in the month of April. So, this is the first quarter where we have an unified systems, unified processes, harmonised policies, and one single bench across the combined entity. So it’s practically just three months since we have been operating as one single entity.”
The positive impact of synergy of two companies were seen in improvement in utilisation and the optimisation of overall bench. “We have been focusing more on cross training and up-skilling. Our EBIT also improved from 16.4% to 16.7% in June quarter. We are also deriving synergy in terms of growing of account by cross selling and up-selling.”
He added that “the only thing that is not in our control is the delay in the decision makings of clients. Otherwise, whatever we have thought or expected before the merger, is pretty much on track.”
