Wipro became IT's CXO nursery under Thierry Delaporte

While India's fourth largest software services firm Wipro bled talent and saw over a dozen exits over the last four years as its former CEO Thierry Delaporte went about his "transformation agenda" at the $11 billion Bengaluru headquartered company, the IT major produced a slew of CXOs for the $245-billion Indian IT industry. Four Wipro former executives went on to become CEOs outside the company, while three became CFOs even as other senior leaders joined smaller and larger firms in top CXO roles, an analysis by ET shows.

The company also produced five CEOs for its internal ranks, who experts say are standalone CEOs in the making. They quote the example of Srinivas Pallia who was CEO of Americas 1 and was elevated as the CEO and MD of Wipro on Sunday after Delaporte's surprise resignation 15 months before the expiry of his term.

The most notable IT leaders from Wipro stable who became CEOs outside the company include former iDEAS (Integrated Digital, Engineering & Application Services) Head, Rajan Kohli who became CEO of CitiusTech. Former CEO of Wipro's Americas 2, Angan Guha was appointed chief of BirlaSoft and former COO at Wipro Sanjeev Singh who went on to lead CMS IT Services. Turki Bin Nader, who was appointed by Delaporte as general manager and country head, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, quit Wipro to become CEO of Capgemini Saudi Arabia in January 2024.


Internally Thierry appointed many CEOs including for the four Strategic Market Units (SMUs) - Srini Pallia for America 1, Suzanne Dann for Americas 2, Pierre Bruno for Europe, and Anis Chenchah for APMEA (Asia Pacific Middle East Africa). Most recently, under Delaporte's watch Anne-Marie Rowland was appointed as the CEO of Wipro's biggest acquired company - Capco. Rowland was managing partner of Capco's business in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

3 CFOs gifted to the industry

Three top executives from Wipro stable also went to become CFOs outside the company. Jatin Dalal the former CFO at Wipro joined bigger rival Cognizant and took charge as its CFO last financial year. Similarly, Kamini Shah, CFO at Wipro's Americas 1 quit the company to become CFO at Birlasoft last year. Nithin V Jaganmohan the former CFO Americas 2 also exited from Wipro to become the CFO of IT firm, Xoriant.

Outsourcing expert and CEO at EIIRTrend, Pareekh Jain, said, "Big change creates opportunities. And big companies like Wipro and others have many hidden talents in their bench waiting for opportunities. Thierry gave opportunities to many people internally and externally including Pallia in leadership roles and many leaders developed in his tenure moved out to become CEOs outside the company. The transformation journey under him produced many leaders not only as CEOs but also CXOs."

Becoming CXOs outside Wipro

Gurvinder Sahni, Former VP at Wipro too quit the company to become the CMO (chief marketing officer) at Persistent Systems last April. The controversial former senior vice president Mohd Haque against whom Wipro filed a case of breach of non-compete clause last year, went on to become the chief commercial officer, Americas, of Cognizant.

Analysts at Nuvama noted, “His (Delaporte) tenure of four years, while laden with strong growth in FY22, also saw an exodus of employees, at senior management level. Some of the people leaving were actually those that Delaporte had hired himself, after he became the CEO—bringing into question the entire ‘hiring local’ strategy.”

They added, “Delaporte had been building strong local leadership at Wipro. In the first three years of his tenure, he tried putting together a robust leadership bench, of local talent, to enable Wipro grow in geographies overcoming language and cultural barriers. However, the strategy did not play out completely as planned. Few of his hires did not stay for even 24 months at Wipro, and quit amid a slew of resignations of long-term Wipro employees, who found themselves side-lined under the new leadership.”

Commenting on the depth of Wipro’s talent, analysts at Nomura wrote, “We think the two key C-level roles (CEO and CFO) both have been replaced with internal candidates to signal confidence in the depth of senior leadership talent available at Wipro and to address the significant churn seen over the past two years. Aparna Iyer was appointed as the CFO in Nov 2023 and now, Srini has been appointed as the CEO in Apr 2024.”

On Wednesday, Wipro also announced the appointment of insider Malay Joshi as CEO of Americas 1 SMU

Wipro’s incidental gift to the industry of top leaders is in stark contrast to the company’s own struggle to get a CEO who would fire its growth engine. “Since the turn of the century, Wipro has seen eight CEOs moving out till date,” said Jain of EIIRTrend.