Infosys reshuffles top executive line after poor Q1 performance

It is becoming a norm to reshuffle top executives whenever a company finds itself in rough waters. Following in the footsteps of Flipkart, Infosys, which reported a poor first-quarter performance, has swiftly executed a restructure in its top management team and asked some of its key leaders to take up new roles.

In an email to employees on Monday, Vishal Sikka, Infosys CEO, announced all the changes,admitting disappointment with Infosys's first-quarter disaster.

Sikka has appointed company veteran Deepak Padaki as the new head of mergers and acquisitions. Prior to his new responsibilities, Padaki was the company's chief risk officer and head of the strategy. Former SAP executive Ritika Suri who currently heads the $500-million Infosys Innovation Fund has been assigned to oversee large deals.

Since Vishal Sikka’s appointment as CEO in August 2014, the company has witnessed at least six top-level exits including the latest one- AnupUppadhayay, who was recently asked to work on large deals after being moved from his previous role as CEO of Infosys BPO. Anantha Radhakrishnan was appointed earlier this year as his replacement at the helm of the BPO business.

Other names in the exit list include the likes of CFO Rajiv Bansal, company veterans such as Sanjay Jalona and Samson David and former EdgeVerve head Michael Reh.

Narasimha Rao Manepalli has been named to take over Samson David's old roles, including heading the implementation of Infosys's new artificial-intelligence platform Mana. In the restructured team, Sanjay Purohit will work with COO PravinRao on strategic initiatives, including helping bring Design Thinking to clients and Former Google executive Sudhir Jha who joined Infosys earlier this year will work closely with Navin Budhiraja to help build out Mana.

"Infosys rejig was expected as they did achieve some success in bringing up  internal efficiency with their zero bench strategy and automation in their fixed price projects in the last  few quarter. Now it’s time for them to look at outwards focused Go-To-Market strategies which will push the revenue, deals and addition of new customers. The current realignment of the leaders is an indication of their intent to take on all the headwinds and sail the company towards incremental growth and big audacious goals," said Thomas George, senior vice president, CyberMedia Research.