In an attempt at damage control, Infosys has communicated to its employees that the company’s management structure is robust enough to withstand the exit of key officials.
Stating that the company was at a threshold of change, Infosys Executive Chairman N.R. Narayana Murthy, in an email to the employees, said younger talent will be given a chance to grow.
Even though the exit of V. Balakrishnan, a board member and former CFO, was unfortunate, the company should move on from here, Naarayana Murthy said.
The exits come amidst organisational restructuring that Murthy is overseeing after returning to revive the sagging fortunes of the IT major.
“The exit of Balakrishnan will not make any material impact at a business level as he was not heading a very big chunk of the company’s revenues,” said Angel Broking IT & Telecom analyst, Ankita Somani. Balakrishnan headed Infosys BPO, Finacle, India Business Unit and was Chairman of Lodestone, a consulting company Infosys acquired in September 2012.
While Infosys does not give out numbers specifically pertaining to these units, back-of-the-envelope calculations point out that Balakrishnan was handling around 10 per cent of the overall business. However, his exit will not impact the company which has around 1.5 lakh employees, say analysts like A.K. Prabhakar, former head of equity research at Anand Rathi.
“His role was not client facing and most companies in the outsourcing sector require someone who lives in the US and can walk the talk with them in their locations,” said Kris Lakshmikanth, CEO of Head Hunters India.
Strong bench strength Other insiders also pointed out that while most of the candidates believe they can head the company, Narayana Murthy believes strongly that the company still has strong bench strength of executives with new thoughts, to lead the company in the future.
Sundararaman Viswanathan, Manager – Consulting, Zinnov, believes Infosys has a leadership team that can ride out this spate of management exits. However, some analysts have reservations.
“Though the impact of top management exits at Infosys will not have an immediately bearing with regard to Infosys’ revenues, it may have some effect over a medium term,” Ankita Somani added.
venkatesh.ganesh@thehindu.co.in