The Head of Tech Mahindra IES Becomes COO at Cyient
Karthik Natarajan, the former head of Tech Mahindra’s Integrated Engineering Services (IES), has joined Cyient as COO. We think, the appointment of Mr. Natarajan is a welcome move for Cyient, which has faced growth challenges in the past quarters, resulting from its client concentration and its exposure to Boeing and Pratt & Whitney.
Mr. Natarajan is credited for growing IES to a 13,500 employee-strong unit and $700m in revenues. Under his leadership, IES developed from a dual background in automotive (with Mahindra and Mahindra as a key client) and telecom to software products (with a $230m software product development contract from Comverse) and aerospace (Bombardier) and rail (Alstom) industries.
IES has been relatively quiet on M&As during his tenure. Pininfarina, the style and design automotive firm, stands out as a significant acquisition (shared between M&M and Tech Mahindra).
The first mission of Mr. Natarajan will be to reignite growth at Cyient. We should learn more very quickly how he will resume growth. We are interested in learning his thoughts about the short-series manufacturing arm of Cyient, DLM, whose turnaround is taking much more than the two years initially planned at the time of the acquisition of DLM. We are also expecting Mr. Natarajan to reshape the portfolio of Cyient through acquisitions. Will he look to strengthen the digital skills of Cyient, or will he look to expand Cyient to software product development and automotive?