Seniors’ exits unlikely to have big impact: Infosys president UB Pravin Rao

BANGALORE: UB Pravin Rao, president and board member at Infosys, has said the company is not concerned about the recent senior-level exits and they are unlikely to have any significant impact on its performance.

Infosys, India’s second largest software provider, is seeing more positivity in large markets and expects client budgets in 2014 to be flat with a positive bias, ICICI Securities analyst Kuldeep Kaul said in a note on Thursday, citing Rao, who spoke at an investors’ conference organised by the brokerage firm, in Hong Kong.

While discretionary spending by customers has increased, Rao said the company would continue to witness quarterly volatility in discretionary spends as most clients are only spending on shorter duration software projects.

“Telecom, pharma and utilities verticals remain a bit challenging in terms of spends, though banking and manufacturing should do relatively well,” the brokerage firm cited Rao as saying. Rao was appointed president in January when Infosys disbanded its executive council. While he focuses on the company’s delivery operations, BG Srinivas , widely regarded as the man likely to succeed current CEO SD Shibulal, was appointed as president in charge of Infosys’s global markets.

The president structure is part of Infosys founder and chairman NR Narayana Murthy’s plan to return the company to industryleading growth after nearly two years of underperformance.