In the end, it was more of a logical conclusion.
The suspense was all but gone when Natarajan Chandrasekaran, head of TCS, emerged the top contender for the post of chairman of Tata Sons, the holding entity for the Tata Empire, after the Tatas made it known that it would be an insider who might ultimately get to succeed interim chairman Rata Tata.
But the day of his selection following a Board meeting held on Thursday at Bombay House was significant as it marked a milestone for country's largest IT company, and biggest private sector employer, which Chandra, as he was fondly called, has been heading as its chief executive officer and MD since 2009.
On Thursday, TCS touched $1-billion mark in profit for the first time in its history, which was up 2.9% on quarter.
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Topline at Rs 29,735 crore grew 1.5% on quarter with stable operating margin at 26%.
That's no mean feat when you are heading 3,78,497 people across the globe working on areas like automation, digital transformations and cloud computing, stuff that are defining the every facet of our daily lives, how we communicate, work and spend leisure time.
These are the domains that would define the parameters on which everything in a knowledge economy would get measured and existence validated including how and in what form the house of the Tatas would survive.
Perhaps to prepare him for the bigger role, Tata Sons on October 25 inducted Chandrasekaran into its Board.
On that day Ralf Speth, CEO of Jaguar Land Rover, the other cash generator of the group, was also brought in, perhaps to keep everyone else guessing.
But then Speth had only been concerned with making good luxury cars, a role that diminishes in significance when compared with what TCS was doing about transforming people's lives.
Born in 1963, Chandra joined TCS in 1987 after completing Masters in Computer Applications from Regional Engineering College, Trichy, Tamil Nadu. Significantly, he did not attend any premier technology/management institutes in India or abroad.
He rose to the post of Chief Operating Officer in 2007 and then succeeded S. Ramadorai in 2009.
Under his leadership, TCS's topline jumped three-fold from Rs 30,000 crore in fiscal 2010 to Rs 1.09 lakh crore in fiscal 2016 while profits rose three times to Rs 24,375 crore.
Beyond office, Chandra is an avid photographer, and a passionate long-distance runner who has completed several marathons around the world including Amsterdam, Boston, Chicago, Berlin, Mumbai, New York, Prague, Stockholm, Salzburg and Tokyo. He clocks about 15-kilometre daily in Mumbai where he lives with his wife Lalitha and son Pranav.
