Leadership Churn In Indian IT Industry Is Seemingly Far From Over

The Indian IT industry has started witnessing churn in leadership positions with the hierarchy in the domestic segment seeing many leadership shuffles last year, especially in the IT services category. However, such a trend has not been witnessed in the engineering service industry. Even so, 2025 has started with key changes at the top level. For instance, LTIMindtree has named Venugopal Lambu as its next CEO. Lambu, a former president of the company, will succeed Debashis Chatterjee. A few days earlier, its president of global markets Sudhir Chaturvedi had stepped down. This is one of the major leadership changes in the Indian IT industry marking the commencement of 2025. Similarly, within the engineering services space, Cyient’s chief executive officer and executive director Karthikeyan Natarajan resigned as the engineering and IT services company. The resignation came after the company reported disappointing Q3 results that effectively lowered its guidance for FY25, leading to the investors' concerns. The stock price of the ER&D firm plunged around 20 per cent post the results announcement.

What is indicative of the trends is that Indian IT industry will continue to see more such changes as the year progresses. Though there are several new leaders coming, more exits cannot be ruled out. It is more likely in the engineering services space, given that the global engineering services industry is expected to have a tough 2025. Some key verticals like automotive are not performing to their potential and many of the players are already reporting slowdown in revenue growth. As the going gets tough, boards will demand more accountability from top leaders, which could lead to more exits. Moreover, stock performance will create further pressure as investors will be worried over the future prospects. Against this backdrop, engineering services firms are likely to see many more leadership changes this year. Indian IT services companies have seen several such changes in the last two years. From TCS and Wipro to Tech Mahindra, many new leaders are now at the helm. As signs of recovery become visible, experts opine that CXO-level changes may be a few.

However, AI-led developments are evolving pretty fast. As more companies bet on AI-powered growth, any sudden disruption can change the game plan entirely. For instance, the advent of Chinese AI startup ‘DeepSeek’ into the global AI scene has already created waves in the technology industry. The company has released its solutions at a fraction of the investment, which US companies like OpenAI have done for their generative AI model. Analysts are wondering about the possible impact of such development on technology industry in general and IT services industry in particular. Global tech giants like Nvidia and others have seen a sharp fall after the Chinese firm released its new GenAI model. Investors are worried that what will happen to the demand for AI-powered chips, solutions and applications that are being developed by numerous technology firms across the world. Therefore, the entire landscape may see much disruption in the coming quarters. Now it remains to be seen how Indian IT industry navigates these challenges going forward.