LTIMindtree's Debashis Chatterjee retires early, Venu Lambu takes charge
Bengaluru: LTIMindtree's CEO Debashis Chatterjee oversaw the complex merger of two firms with distinct identities. This merger allowed the company to shed its mid-tier image and break into the tier-1 Indian IT services league.
Chatterjee was entrusted with the crucial task of bridging two firms marked by cultural asymmetry, bringing them into a cohesive and future-ready IT firm. Popularly known as DC, he embraced the challenge head-on.
As CEO and MD of Mindtree from 2019 until its merger with L&T Infotech in November 2022, he then took the helm of the newly formed LTIMindtree. Under his leadership, the company rose to become India's sixth-largest IT services firm by revenue, leveraging LTI's engineering DNA with Mindtree's experience DNA to create a stronger moat by building newer capabilities, client relationships, talent, and go-to-market (GTM) strategy.
To reposition the firm in the eyes of clients, DC created the LTMOne strategy focused on creating a strong GTM and account mining, cost synergies, and prudent capital allocation to drive profitable growth.
After spending over 35 years in the IT sector , Chatterjee opted to retire as the CEO of LTIMindtree due to personal reasons, leaving behind a strong growth engine poised to thrive in the digital marketplace. In fact, he grew LTIMindtree's banking, financial services (BFSI) practice, and technology businesses each into the $1 billion revenue club.
In his previous role, Chatterjee led the BFS practice for Cognizant as SVP and global head until 2007.
He was also instrumental in growing the infrastructure services practice to a $1 billion mark. DC was employee no.1 at Cognizant's development centre in Kolkata, which was incubated at his home office there.
Ramkumar Ramamoorthy, partner at Catalincs and former Cognizant India CMD, said, "DC's stellar leadership was an inspiration for a generation of mid-sized IT services companies to breach the magical billion dollars in revenue and compete with the tier-1 players.
Until then, the separation between the tier-1 and mid-sized companies was quite stark, with dozens of promising companies getting acquired before they crossed the half-a-billion or billion-dollar revenue mark.
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He laid the spadework to envision the enterprise of tomorrow. Today, LTIMindtree has over 100 Fortune 500 companies as customers, participating aggressively in vendor consolidation deals, timing its strategic pivots, and turbocharging its portfolios, especially as it gears up to touch a near-term $5 billion goalpost.
Currently, LTIMindtree has $4.5 billion in revenue, with over 700 clients and 84,000 employees.
Under his and the new CEO Venu Lambu's watch, LTIMindtree won its largest deal ever, worth $450 million, from US food processing and nutrition company Archer Daniels Midland (ADM). A few months ago, LTIMindtree bagged an over $200 million deal, which is a combination of renewal and new scope. LTIMindtree's strategy is built on accelerating momentum in core verticals like BFSI and technology, expanding its Fortune 500 client base, strengthening horizontal capabilities in data and analytics, and deepening its hyperscaler partnerships.
He retires from the firm, leaving behind an ambitious goal. LTIMindtree aims to more than double its revenue, targeting $10 billion by the 2031–32 financial year.
In fact, its chairman SN Subrahmanyan, in a letter to shareholders in the 2024-25 annual report, praised Chatterjee's leadership, saying, "I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the tremendous leadership of Debashis Chatterjee (DC), under whose vision and guidance LTIMindtree has broken the shackles of being a mid-tier Indian IT company and transformed into a global IT services provider, particularly through the successful execution of the complex merger of erstwhile LTI and Mindtree.
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