Chandra skips TCS annual meet amid Air India crisis

BENGALURU/MUMBAI: TCS chairman N Chandrasekaran skipped the company's 30th annual general meeting on Thursday, his second consecutive absence from a Tata Group company's shareholder meeting. Company secretary Yashaswin Sheth informed shareholders that "some exigencies" prevented Chandrasekaran's attendance. The board elected independent director Keki Mistry to preside over the AGM. Chandrasekaran had missed the Tata Consumer Products AGM on Wednesday. While Tata Motors will hold its AGM on Friday, it remains unclear whether Chandrasekaran will chair the meeting. This will be the company's final AGM before its planned split into two separate entities. Chandrasekaran's absences from AGMs and public engagements are due to his involvement in managing the aftermath of last week's Air India flight crash. Chandrasekaran served as the CEO of TCS for eight years before stepping into the role of chairman at Tata Sons. During his introductory speech, Mistry addressed global challenges, including tariffs, conflicts, and AI disruptions. "We are presently engulfed by uncertainty on multiple fronts.

The global economic connections are being reconfigured on a daily basis. From tariffs to supply chains, wars and conflicts across regions, to disruption posed by AI, the world faces upheaval at several levels. This turbulence has brought significant shocks to businesses worldwide," Mistry said.

Consequently, organisations are reimagining their systems, processes, and tech. TCS CEO K Krithivasan said clients are prioritising cost optimisation initiatives like vendor consolidation, GenAI, cloud-led operating model transformation and run cost optimisation. "They continue to scale AI and GenAI adoption, focusing on ROI initiatives." GenAI, he said, is delivering productivity improvements across multiple areas such as coding, testing, marketing and product design, content generation, and customer service. "Recent advances in AI, such as reasoning capabilities and agentic AI, are expected to result in higher levels of automation," Mistry explained.