Tech Mahindra MD and CEO designate Mohit Joshi remains optimistic about the medium to long-run growth prospects even though the company went through one of its toughest quarters in April-June this year.

Joshi said that in the past few weeks since he joined Tech Mahindra, he has visited many of its clients and centres and taken stock of the service lines.

“We have had a challenging quarter. But in the medium to long run, given what I have seen of the company, the clients and the ecosystem, I remain optimistic about the opportunities in front of us,” he said at the first quarter earnings call of the company.

The IT service firm’s consolidated net profit for Q1FY24 fell by 38 per cent to Rs 692.5 crore, while consolidated revenue saw a quarterly decline of 4.07 per cent to Rs 13,159 crore.

Scrips of Tech Mahindra at Rs 1,100.30 was down 3.82 per cent at the Bombay Stock Exchange on Thursday as the company has slipped behind LTIMindtree in terms of net profit with the latter’s bottomline at Rs 1,152 crore in Q1FY24.

Outgoing MD and CEO C.P. Gurnani said it would be a “baptism by fire” for Joshi as he gains experience in the company. Joshi will take over the reins from Gurnani who will retire in December 2023.

“Revenue dropped and costs soared; we were not able to balance it right which is why we had such a bad quarter in terms of overall performance,” Gurnani told analysts at the earnings call.

However, he remained bullish about the growth prospects with the company continuing to have dialogues with its customers, upskilling about 8,000 people last quarter in new AI platforms and generative AI.