CEO Stability is Paying Off for Mid-Size Indian IT
Indian IT’s last quarterly results was the real report card of how the firms are pushing through macroeconomic conditions to stay on top of their services game. The growth of mid-size firms, and the flatlining and decline that the bigger firms saw was also a testament to the companies’ leadership. Thanks to the deal pipelines, the stars of the show in the quarter remained firms like Persistent Systems, Hexaware, Mphasis, and Coforge, with a huge order book going into FY26. The CEOs of these mid-sized firms have all been in the driver’s seat for years—each with more than five years at the helm, and all bringing deep experience from earlier stints at larger IT firms. The Slow-Growth CEOs IT giants like Infosys, TCS, Tech Mahindra, and Wipro maintained a slimmer order book when compared to last year. These companies recently handed over the reins to new leaders with less than two years in the role. TCS’ K Krithivasan took over in June 2023, Tech Mahindra’s Mohit Joshi joined in December 2023, and Wipro’s Srinivas Pallia entered the scene in just April last year. Infosys, with Salil Parekh at the helm since 2018, still remains on a downward revenue trajectory, despite claiming confidence in generative AI for deals. These giants like TCS, Infosys, and Tech Mahindra scraped together single-digit growth, or even shrank in Wipro’s case. Meanwhile, mid-cap firms saw their revenues surge. The fourth quarter results indicate that smaller firms are able to pull through quicker compared to the bigger firms. Zoho’s Sridhar Vembu had already established earlier that macroeconomic conditions are temporary and have not led to the sudden downfall of Indian IT. Changing the 30-year-old way of working is what mid-sized firms are seemingly able to pull off quickly. Firms such as Coforge grew by over 31%, Persistent by nearly 19%, Hexaware by almost 14%, Mphasis, though small, grew at 2.9%, but with a great outlook for the future. The CEOs of these firms have been working at the firm for at least five years. The CEOs of the Year, and Why Sudhir Singh became the CEO of Coforge in May 2017 after spending nine years at Infosys. Under his leadership, the company has emerged as one of the best-performing ones in the quarter. To explain how the deals got impacted because of Singh, after acquiring Hyderabad-based Cigniti last year, the firm quickly signed a mega $1.56 billion deal with Sabre, a Texas-based travel tech firm. Add to that a strong pipeline of deals—Coforge, for instance, ended the last quarter with $2.1 billion worth of orders—and the contrast becomes even starker. That not only made Coforge one of the few Indian firms to land a billion-dollar deal in recent times, but also propelled it into the list of top 10 IT services companies in the country. Meanwhile, despite a slow revenue growth, LTIMindtree reported another quarter with $1.5 billion in contract value, even though Debashis Chatterjee has been the CEO only since 2022. This shows that the agility of the firms with smaller teams possibly makes a difference. Persistent Systems doubled down on regulated verticals and brought in experienced leadership across sectors to help close big-ticket deals. Sandeep Kalra became the CEO in October 2020, but he had over 14 years of experience at HCLTech, and this quarter marked Persistent’s 20th consecutive quarter of revenue growth. The strategy seems to be working, even in an otherwise cautious market. For Q4 FY25, the company reported a total contract value (TCV) of $517.5 million, compared to $594.1 million in the December quarter. Net new TCV was $329 million, slightly lower than $333.6 million in Q3 but higher than the $302 million reported in the same quarter last year. Persistent reiterated its long-term goal of achieving $2 billion in annual revenue by FY27, highlighting continued progress toward this milestone. It has now become the 9th largest IT company in India. The Case for AI in Deals Then comes Hexaware’s CEO, Srikrishna Ramakarthikeyan, who took the post in August 2014, and has helped the company rise ever since. For the quarter ended March 31, 2025, Hexaware’s revenue stood at $371.5 million, a 12.4% increase year-on-year and an almost flat 0.2% QoQ growth. Hexaware’s AI-driven approach enabled significant growth across clients and capabilities in Q1CY25, securing several major deals. The company now has three customers contributing over $75 million in revenue each, with one crossing the $100 million mark. “We continued to execute well on the basics that power our growth — win market share through delivery excellence and invest in creating differentiated capabilities, talent, and platforms. The strength of our deal wins positions us strongly for a year of solid growth,” Ramakarthikeyan said. Mphasis is another firm that stole the spotlight this year. With CEO Nitin Rakesh at the top since January 2017, Q4 FY25 was the strongest quarter in the last three years. The company’s revenue rose 2.6% sequentially in USD terms and 2.9% in constant currency, supported by strong deal wins and a record pipeline. Mphasis secured deal wins worth $390 million during the quarter, the highest in seven quarters, with 59% of those wins driven by AI-led initiatives. The company’s total contract value (TCV) pipeline was at record levels, growing 26% sequentially and 86% year-on-year. “In this uncertain macro environment, our focus is on continued investments in growth, keeping tech and AI at the core, and leveraging solutions to transform and modernise our clients’ technology and operations stack,” Rakesh said. All in all, mid-size firms’ CEOs with experience from bigger firms and stable years, have contributed to the growth, at least in terms of deals and order bookings. While big IT companies are yet to carve out revenues specific to areas like GenAI, there’s still a long road ahead. But for now, the mid-caps seem hungrier and focused on closing newer deals.
The CEOs of these mid-sized firms have all been in the driver’s seat for years—each with more than five years at the helm, driving great revenue growth.
In this quarter remained firms like Persistent Systems, Hexaware, Mphasis, and Coforge, with a huge order book going into FY26.
["AI in finance", "Indian IT"]
["Go", "GenAI", "programming_languages:R", "AI", "programming_languages:Go", "Git", "AI in finance", "RAG", "Aim", "generative AI", "Indian IT", "R"]
["AI", "generative AI", "GenAI", "Aim", "RAG", "R", "Go", "Git", "programming_languages:R", "programming_languages:Go"]
Mohit writes about AI in simple, explainable, and often funny words. He's especially passionate about chatting with those building AI for Bharat, with the occasional detour into AGI.