HCL Tech changes CEO hours before Q2 results

C Vijayakumar takes charge, while Anant Gupta announces his Rs 100-crore start-up

Hours before it announced its second quarter results, HCL Technologies on Friday announced that it has a new chief executive officer. The company said its CEO Anant Gupta has resigned and will be replaced by C Vijayakumar who was the chief operating officer. On his part, Gupta took little time to announce the launch of  Techcelx, a business acceleration and technology investment firm focused on developing digital products and platforms for enterprises.

Though the succession was planned, the timing took everyone by surprise, including a host of senior managers at HCL. At HCL Technologies, usually a six-month transition period is given to the incumbent CEO, who for the while holds the position of COO. In Vijayakumar’s case, it was just four months.

“What we know is that in July 2016, Vijayakumar was announced as the next CEO of the company and Gupta was supposed to hand over the reigns in December. But this was a sudden decision which we came to know about after the board meeting on Friday morning. Chairman Shiv Nadar and the board members took the decision to accept Gupta’s resignation,” said a company insider. Sources also added that in the past 48 hours, during the meetings of the boards of directors, the decision was taken.

While some people claimed the decision was taken by the top boss, Nadar, who was apparently unhappy with the company’s overall performance, others said it was Gupta who wanted an early departure because he was on the verge of launching his own start-up.

“Nadar holds a significant chunk of the company shares and he was concerned with the growth of the company for the past few quarters,” said a source who has worked with HCL Technologies in the recent past.

However, sources inside the company said the decision was not based on performance as for the last few quarters the company has been doing well and the slump was only when the whole sector was going through tough time. “It was never about performance. Gupta wanted to get relieved early as he was on the verge of opening his own start-up and the transition process for Vijayakumar got over early as he had been working on most of the processes for more than a year. Gupta asked the board to be relieved early, and his requested was granted,” said a company insider.

Analysts still wondered why Gupta chose to announce his new firm hours after HCL Q2 results and announcement on the new CEO. Repeated calls to Gupta went unanswered.

Gupta was made the CEO in January 2013 and took over from Vineet Nayar. The announcement was made in July 2012 and Gupta was made the COO for six months before taking over the charge.

On Techcelx, Gupta said, “I am pursuing my long-term goals and passion towards promoting our country’s entrepreneurship and innovation potential in the technology space.”

“The launch of this Rs 100-crore fund is a significant step in this direction where we will be focusing on ventures with specialisation in technologies like machine learning, IoT (Internet of Things), AI, analytics and data science and automation across three main sectors of banking, education and healthcare. Our vision is to help start-up organisations develop and apply next-gen technology solutions to disrupt legacy operating models.”