Infotech Lead Asia: HCL Technologies has appointed Anant Gupta as new CEO and president.
The current CEO Vineet Nayar will continue his role as vice chairman of the company.
Gupta has been with the company for the past 19 years during which he is credited with building its infrastructure business.
Meanwhile, HCL Technologies’ consolidated net profit for its fiscal second quarter ended December 31 rose to Rs 965 crore from Rs 573 crore a year earlier.
According to Gartner, IT services spending is expected to grow 5.2 percent to $927 billion in 2013, compared with growth of 1.8 percent in 2012.
In Q2 HCL Technologies saw its employee strength come down by nearly 150 people to 85,194 people.
While the company hired 5,136 (gross) employees during the quarter, on a net basis, 141 people left the organization in the second quarter of 2012-13.
HCL added 3,291 (gross) people in its IT services business (including software and infrastructure services), but on a net basis, the headcount in the division was lower by 395 people. The total headcount in the IT services business stood at 75,226 as on December 31, 2012.
BPO services saw addition of 1,845 (gross) people, while net addition stood at 254 in the quarter, taking the total headcount in the division to 9,968.
Dipen Shah, head of PCG (Private Client Group) Research, Kotak Securities, said: “HCL Technologies results beat our expectations. The 3 percent QoQ volume growth was better than peers for the quarter. Operating margins surprised up positively, partly due to reduction in number of employees.”
The infrastructure solutions business has been driving growth for HCL Technologies as the deal wins  of the past few quarters start scaling up. The differentiated strategy of the company has resulted in sustained growth with improving margins. Continued differentiation with cost management under the new management may result in growth for the company in the future quarters.
