'Too many regulations may kill innovation'

For AIMAN EZZAT, chief executive officer (CEO) of Paris-headquartered Capgemini Group, the current phase is the most exciting in the last six-seven years. He tells Shivani Shinde in Mumbai, during his recent India visit, that there are two reasons for this. First, IT services players are more visible across client organisations. The partnership with clients is more strategic and integral. Two, is the evolution of technology and its convergence with businesses, making them look for partners in their tech journey. He also talks about the hype around Gen Al, among other things. Edited excerpts:

The first half of the year is over, how do you see technology spends now?

Yes, there is recovery. But the recovery slope is slower and similar to the start of the year. We did say that we will end up with a higher exit rate and we stick by it. In terms of geographies, Europe has been more resilient than the US. In the US, there was more focus around cost reduction last year. Reason being, the technology bills have gone up, labour cost has gone up, the consumption of Cloud and software as a service (SaaS) has increased and so has the price. With heavy spending in 2021 and 2022, customer's technology bills have gone up, and now they want to rationalise. The attention to cost remains, but now they want to invest to transform and be efficient. We see large programmes on how they can drive efficiency.

Would it be fair to assume discretionary spending will also be back as recovery happens?