6 things you didn't know about new Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran
Tata Sons on Thursday appointed Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) chief executive Natarajan Chandrasekaran as its new chairman, ending a three-month-long suspense after a bitter public spat between Ratan Tata and Cyrus Mistry broke out following the latter's ouster in October last year.
He will take over as the executive chairman from February 21. Here are five things about Chandrasekaran, who is also known as Chandra among close friends and associates, that you may not have known:
1. He has never worked anywhere else, but TCS. After completing his MCA from Tiruchirappalli Regional Engineering College (now NIT) in 1987, he went to TCS to do his project work and went on to become the CEO in 2009. He says he has never applied (for a job) anywhere else or even written a resume.
2. When he joined TCS in 1987, the company had about 500 employees. It now has 378,49 — TCS is the third-largest IT employer in the world and fourth-largest employer in India.
3. A passionate long-distance runner, he has run marathons in Amsterdam, Boston, Chicago, Berlin, Mumbai, New York and Tokyo. But Chandrasekaran, who has a family history of diabetes, took up running at the age of 44 (2007) to improve his fitness level. He ran for his first marathon a year later in 2008.
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| N Chandrasekaran participating at the 2014 Mumbai Marathon. (Credit: PTI photo) |
4. While most of us struggle to remember names, Chandra has a remarkable capacity for remembering people. Some executives claim he knows at least 5,000 of them by their names.
5. He has tried his hands in farming as well. Chandra's father wanted one of his children to work with him on the farm. While his older brothers took up professional jobs, Chandrasekaran, after doing a BSc in applied sciences, went to join his father. He, however, gave up in five months and went back to school for a master’s degree.
6. Chandra studied in a Tamil-medium government school and switched to English-medium for the senior secondary exams. About learning English, he says, "For the first couple of years when I switched over, it was difficult because every math and physics problem, I would think in Tamil and convert. But over a period of time, it became very comfortable".