B G Srinivas, 3 others in fray for Infosys top job

Srinivas was in the reckoning for the post of chief executive officer before Vishal Sikka took over

Former Infosys executive B G Srinivas, interim Managing Director  and Chief Executive Officer U B Pravin Rao, Deputy Chief Operating Officer Ravi Kumar S, and head of BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance), health care and life sciences Mohit Joshi could be candidates for Infosys CEO, said people familiar with the development.

Srinivas, who was in the reckoning for the top job before Vishal Sikka took over as the first non-founder chief executive of Infosys, is group managing director at PCCW Group, the holding company of Hong Kong Telecom. He left Infosys in 2014 as president, global markets.

Nandan Nilekani, Infosys co-founder who returned to the company as chairman, said the board could look at internal and external candidates and Infosys alumni for the next CEO. Infosys has appointed executive recruitment firm Egon Zehnder to work with the nominations and remunerations committee to identify the right candidate.

Analysts said the Indian information technology services major would have to wait to attract external candidates until it had a strong board and there was clarity on the founders’ feud with the board.

Nilekani, who joined the as the non-executive and non-independent chairman of the board, claimed he had been consensually invited by the founders and investors. This arguably gives the company a good start for the CEO search.

A person familiar with the developments added Anand Swaminathan, senior vice-president and head, high-tech, Infosys, could be elevated to a role similar to that of Ravi Kumar S or Mohit Joshi.

Nilekani said bringing stability and looking for a CEO were his two key priorities. “We are confident that we will have a large pool of internal and external candidates. In the last few hours I have received many mails and we are looking for the right candidate,” Nilekani said.

With Infosys’ experiment with an external CEO mired by cultural differences, two former Infosys executives said “reaching out to alumni could be a better option at this juncture”.