Who will be the next chairman of Microsoft India?

BANGALORE, INDIA: Suresh Vaswani, the former joint-CEO of Wipro Technologies, who was forced to quit the IT bellwether along with the other joint-CEO Girish Paranjpe, is among the front-runners for the post of Microsoft India chairman, The Times of India reported citing some sources familiar with the developments at Microsoft.

Microsoft India chairman Ravi Venkatesan had put in his papers last month as he has decided to pursue opportunities outside the company and Microsoft is in search of a new head in India, which is an important market for it.

Though Vaswani's name has been doing the rounds, he and Microsoft denied to make any comment on the report.

Last month, Girish Paranjpe and Suresh Vaswani were offered severance pay of Rs. 7 crore each following their unceremonious exit from Wipro.

Though Wipro Technologies claimed that Girish Paranjape and Suresh Vaswani left the organization citing personal reasons, there were rumours that they were asked to leave the company as Wipro wanted to reshuffle the management structure.

In the recent times there were many top-level exits from Indian IT firms. Apart from Venkatesan, Paranjpe and Vaswani, people like Ashok Soota, co-founder and chairman, MindTree and Bhaskar Pramanik, Oracle India head had also put in their papers, forcing their respective companies to log on to the talent-hunting mode.

Rajan Anandan, former managing director of Microsoft India, had recently joined Google India as vice-president, sales and operations.