Infosys CEO Salil Parekh makes first top-level rejig

Salil Parekh, who took over as Infosys CEO three months ago, has made his first top-deck reshuffle.

He will now have three additional direct reportees - senior VP and global head of manufacturing and Edge products Nitesh Banga, SVP, and head of engineering Sudip Singh, and SVP and global head of communications, media & technology Anand Swaminathan.

Parekh has six other direct reportees, including COO U B Pravin Rao, president & deputy COO Ravi Kumar, and president & head of banking, financial services & insurance Mohit Joshi.


The three new inductees are internally being referred to as independent vertical heads. An email sent to Infosys on these changes did not elicit a response till the time of going to press.

London-based Ovum Research analyst Hansa Iyengar said that Infosys is rethinking its strategic approach to the market. "The leadership rejig brings focus back on the delivery side of the business and reiterates Infosys' commitment to services," she said.


"Under Vishal Sikka (the previous CEO), the company had taken a strong stance towards a product-oriented go-to-market and many clients got the picture that the company was becoming a product company. Infosys has reiterated, under the new leadership, that they are a services company and will continue to be one. But it's not that the focus on solutions has gone away, the firm is still focused on using assets to drive optimisation, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness for its operations and clients," Iyengar.

Ravi Kumar has been given the additional responsibility to head consulting. It was previously led by Rajesh Krishnamurthy, who quit in January to join a French shipping company.

Kumar was the global head of consulting and system integration between 2011 and 2013. Consulting has been one of the weak spots for Indian IT firms. Infosys has been struggling to build a consulting-led practice, something which MNCs including Accenture and IBM have been strong in.

The latest reshuffle is partly a move to redistribute the portfolios of two presidents, Krishnamurthy and Sandeep Dadlani, who quit Infosys over the past nine months. Sources told TOI that Sudip Singh has got the additional responsibility of energy and utilities.

Swaminathan, who was in charge of technology and spearheaded the Microsoft account, gets additional charge of communications and media. In June last year, Dadlani's responsibilities were divided between Karmesh Vaswani - who became the global head of retail, CPG & logistics - and Nitesh Banga. Vaswani was previously the head of Europe for retail, CPG, and logistics.