HCL Technologies appoints Anant Gupta as CEO; Vineet Nayar to continue as Vice Chairman

NEW DELHI: HCL Technologies formally announced Anant Gupta as its new CEO and President, replacing Vineet Nayar. He was earlier serving as the President and Chief Operating Officer. Nayar would, however, continue his role as Vice Chairman of the company.

Gupta, 44, has been with the company for the past 19 years during which he is credited with building its infrastructure business, in which the company manages the technology resources of global customers remotely, into a $1 billion-plus business.

The change will mark the latest instance of a CEO-level shuffle in India's IT sector, but is a rare one for HCL, where Nayar has held the top job since 2007. HCL's larger peers TCS, Infosys and Wipro have all got new CEOs in the past two years.

HCL Technologies, country's fourth-largest software services provider, beat estimates with a 68.4 per cent jump in quarterly profit, joining Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services in signalling a pickup in outsourcing.

Consolidated net profit for its fiscal second quarter that ended Dec 31 rose to Rs 965 crore ($176 million) from Rs 573 crore a year earlier. Analysts were expecting profit to rise to Rs 826 crore, according to the latest Reuters data.

"Our growth this quarter was driven by Infrastructure and Financial Services, both growing in excess of 10 per cent sequentially," Anant Gupta said in a statement. That augurs well for outsourcing spending as financial clients are among the largest spenders globally on technology.

HCL Technologies Ltd declared an interim dividend of Rs 2 per equity share of face value of Rs 2 each of the Company. The payment date of the said interim dividend shall be January 31, 2013.