Nearly nine months after stepping down as chairman of Larsen & Toubro (L&T), AM Naik has relinquished his board seat from the conglomerate’s two listed subsidiaries, also handing over the reins to successor S N Subrahmanyan.
On Wednesday, Naik stepped down as the non-executive chairman and director of LTIMindtree (LTIM) and L&T Technology Services (LTTS), marking his exit from the board of all L&T group companies.
“Being a founder of these two firms, I am very closely associated with these companies and following the AGMs of these two companies, I have stepped down. The performance of these two firms has been marvellous, despite us starting 15-20 years later than others, and now we are number five by MCap,” Naik said.
While L&T is growing “very well” and services constitute to about one-third of its profit, the group has a separate focus on these two companies (LTIM and LTTS).
“It is with immense pride and satisfaction when I look back to our modest beginning of $60 million in annual revenues vis a vis LTTS’ current annual revenue run rate of $1.2 billion,” he said.
On September 30, 2023, Naik (82) had stepped down as L&T’s non-executive chairman, handing over the charge to Subrahmanyan – fondly known as SNS in the industry – but continued to be the conglomerate’s chairman emeritus. SNS will now be the chairman of LTIM and LTTS.
Talking about L&T, Naik said that the emphasis on services, manufacturing and services will continue. Naik would be involved with the group as chairman of L&T Employee Trust – the largest single shareholder of the company.
“I can’t breathe without L&T. I will never retire from L&T,” Naik added. He, however, reiterated that there are no plans to merge LTIM and LTTS and they would continue in their respective businesses.
Naik said that he will continue meeting the media but only on charity, societal and philanthropic initiatives. Talking about India becoming the third-largest economy, he said that the country should target a GDP growth of 8%.
Talking about his tenure with L&T, Naik said that he had a vision in 2000 that L&T will become India’s multi national company and now nearly 45% of its revenue is from international businesses. “We are not solely dependent on domestic revenues,” Naik added.
Talking about the deals from Gen-AI, SNS said that both the companies put together sees a prospect of nearly $200 million deals and this is increasing. On the shortage of manpower, SNS said L&T needs to hire 25,000-30,000 labourers and 20,000 engineers immediately.
