The Infosys saga: A leadership factory or a company facing crisis

The company has seen nine senior level exits in 2023 alone

Infosys share prices hit a low of 1.4 per cent during intraday trading as markets grappled with one of its latest leadership exits. Nilanjan Roy, Chief Financial Officer, Infosys, will be the ninth exit the company has seen in a year.

On Monday evening, the company in a stock exchange filing shared that Roy, who has been the CFO for the last four years, has decided to resign and he wants to explore other external opportunities.

The announcement also shared that the company has appointed Jayesh Sanghrajka as the CFO. He takes over from April 1, 2024.

The fact that the company immediately announced a successor is good news and shows that it has enough internal candidates to fill in case of exits.

 

But it is interesting to see that just in one year Infosys has seen nine senior-level exits. This includes people like Mohit Joshi, who now heads Tech Mahindra, Richard Lobo, CHRO, Tech Mahindra, Kapil Jain who quit in April 2023 to join eClerx, Vishal Salvi, CISO and head of cybersecurity practice at the company, who took over the helm of Quick Heal among others.

HR experts are not too surprised with the churn that Infosys is seeing, as well as what the industry has seen. “One cannot deny the fatigue syndrome that is setting in among several top-level executives. Add to this the industry is not growing at a level that it was a few years back. So now many are stuck in a job which does little in terms of adding value or excitement,” said a senior HR professional on the condition of anonymity.

According to insiders, Roy’s resignation had nothing to do with the interpersonal relationship with either the board or CEO, Salil Parekh.