Bs people: Jeya Kumar

'Turnaround man' snapped up by Ipsoft

After a break of six months, Jeya Kumar is back in action as the Chief Executive Officer of Ipsoft’s Asia Pacific operations. Kumar had been at the helm of Mumbai-based Patni Computer Systems, which was acquired by Nasdaq-based iGate and private equity firm Advent last year, for a sum of $1.2 billion.

With 25 years of experience, Kumar has often been dubbed a ‘turnaround man’. It is a well-known fact that he was brought into Patni with an intention to bridge the revenue gap between the company and its peers as well as to try and extract a better valuation for the company for a possible sale.

When Kumar joined Patni, the company was in need of operational and executional focus, which had suffered due to the constant infighting amongst the promoters. But, in his two-year stint at Patni, not only was Kumar successful in steering the company through a choppy period (2008 recession) but also helped give it a smooth transition after its acquisition by iGate.

Prior to his Patni stint, Kumar was heading MphasiS, which had been acquired by EDS in 2006 (EDS was subsequently acquired by HP in 2008). He led the company through transformational changes, making it the fastest growing mid-sized technology company in India.

Kumar, a follower of Sathya Sai Baba of Puttaparthi, Andhra Pradesh, is a resident of Singapore and has worked in Australia, Japan, Holland, the United Kingdom, Mexico and the United States. Before the brief stint with MphasiS, he was with Sun Microsystems for 14 years, managing the $5 billion software services business for the firm. Kumar joined Sun in 1993 and held a succession of increasingly senior management positions, including senior managing director for Japan Sun Services and vice-president, Asia Pacific, Sun Services.

In the past, Kumar has held positions at Apple Computer, the Australian Productivity Council, the Port of Singapore and National Semiconductor company.

IPsoft was founded by Chetan Dube in 1998 with a group of colleagues from New York University. It is a globally-managed services company providing autonomic IT services to corporations worldwide. It believes in optimising IT and eliminating manual processes

Kumar’s arrival reflects IPsoft’s expanding footprint in the Asia Pacific region. IPsoft opened an office at One Raffles Quay in the heart of Singapore, in November. The office is the base of IPsoft’s Asia Pacific operations.