KV Kamath to lead Infosys

Former CEO of ICICI Bank KV Kamath, has been named the new chairman of Infosys Technologies to succeed NR Narayana Murthy.

The decision came after a swift board meeting in Bangalore. Mr Murthy said the nominations committee gave a unanimous recommendation for Mr Kamath to be appointed as the chairman.

The Infosys board met with an agenda to finalise plans for new leadership of the company after the current chairman NR Narayana Murthy retires in August.

Infosys' chief executive officer and managing director S Gopalakrishnan, chief operating officer S.D. Shibulal and senior VP and chief financial officer V Balakrishnan are among the company officials who were present in the board meet.

Several independent directors on the board including KV Kamath and Omkar Goswami also attended the meeting. TV Mohandas Pai, who resigned from the board recently, was also present in the meeting.

Current CEO and board member S. Gopalakrishnan has been appointed as as the Co-chairman of the board of directors.

Kris Gopalakrishnan's initial responsibilities included the management of design, development, implementation, and support of information systems for clients in the consumer products industry in the US.

Between 1987 and 1994, Kris headed the technical operations of KSA/Infosys (a joint venture between Infosys and KSA at Atlanta, US) as vice-president (technical). In 1994, Kris returned to India and was appointed deputy managing director of Infosys.

On June 22, 2007, Kris was appointed the CEO and managing director of Infosys before which he was the chief operating officer (April 2002), the president and joint managing director (August 2006) of Infosys.

In January 2011, Kris was awarded the Padma Bhushan, country's third-highest civilian honour.

SD Shibulal has been appointed as new chief operating officer and managing director of Infosys Technologies. The board of directors after their meeting in Bangalore named current chief operating officer (COO) and board member as the next in line to S Gopalakrishnan, the current chief operating officer. S Gopalakrishnan will continue as CEO till August.

SD Shibulal spearheaded project management and later managed client relationships in the North American region for a decade.

In 1991, he went on a five-year sabbatical to Sun Microsystems, where he was responsible for designing and implementing their first e-commerce application.

In 1997, he returned to Infosys to establish and head the Internet Consultancy practice. He moved on to serve several leadership roles at the group level, firstly as the worldwide head of customer delivery and later as group head, worldwide sales and customer delivery. Over the years, Shibu has been known to foster innovation, leadership, teamwork and work values within the organisation.

On June 22, 2007, Shibu took over from S Gopalakrishnan as chief operating officer and has been serving in this role since.

Along with wife Kumari, he managed the Advaith Foundation, a non-profit that focuses on education.

NR Narayana Murthy's innings at Infosys officially came to an end on Saturday with board of the company appointing KV Kamath as chairman of the company. Murthy will now act as Chairman Emeritus from August 21, a day after he is set to retire from the company.

Murthy served as the CEO of the company for over 20 years between 1981 and 2002, and as the executive chairperson of the Board from 2002 to 2006. He retired from his executive position at Infosys on August 20, 2006. However, he continues as the non-executive chairman of the board and is also the chief mentor of the company.

Murthy has been the force behind the meteoric rise of Infosys. His vision and business sense has made the company go from strength to strength.

Under his leadership, Infosys got listed in the Indian markets in 1993 and later became the first Indian company to get listed on the New York-based Nasdaq in 1999. In 2006, Infosys featured on the coveted Nasdaq 100 index.

Murthy's outstanding leadership qualities have been universally recognised and he serves on the boards of some of the world's biggest companies and organisations such as HSBC, Ford Foundation and the UN Foundation. He served as a member of the Unilever board between 2007 and 2010. He also serves on the boards of Cornell University; Wharton School; Indian School of Business, Hyderabad; and International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore.

He was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, the country's second-highest civilian award after the Bharat Ratna, in 2008.

The latest among the Infosys founders to end ties with the company is K Dinesh. On April 15, 2011, he announced his resignation from the company. Dinesh was director and head, Communication Design Group, Information Systems and Quality and Productivity, and member of the board at Infosys.

From 1991 to 1995, he was in charge of software development activities for Infosys' worldwide operations. He was responsible for execution, implementation and delivery of software solutions to customers.

During Dinesh's tenure as head of quality, company's software quality processes achieved world-class benchmarks, including CMM Level 5 in 1999. Thereafter, he aimed to bring performance excellence to the entire organization.

As head of information systems, Dinesh was instrumental in ensuring the in-house implementation of SAP in a record span of six months. He has championed the cause of technology enabling and automation to help Infosys manage explosive growth without affecting service time.

An IIT Bombay alumnus, Nilekani started his career at Patni Computer Systems. Three years into his job, young Nilekani quit his secure job to team up with Narayana Murthy to start Infosys Technologies.

After serving in various capacities at Infosys, Nilekani took over the reins from Narayana Murthy as the CEO in 2002.

After a successful stint as the top boss, Nilekani relinquished his position for Gopalakrishnan in 2007 and took up the challenge of providing unique identity number to every Indian. He is currently the chairman of the government's ambitious Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).

Mohandas Pai has been the most prominent among the non-founding members of Infosys. Pai is a member of the Board of directors, and Head – administration, Education and Research, Finacle, Human Resources, and Infosys Leadership Institute.

He joined Infosys in 1994 and has served as a member of the board since May 2000. He worked as the chief financial officer from 1994 to 2006. In 2006, he voluntarily demitted the office of CFO to lead efforts in the areas of human resources, education and research.

Pai was an integral part of the Infosys team that enabled the first listing of an India-registered company on New York-based Nasdaq and the first sponsored secondary offering of American Depositary Receipts by an Indian company.

On April 15, 2011, he surprised the industry with an unexpected resignation from all responsibilities at Infosys. On his future plans, Pai said he would spend 30 per cent of his time on promoting higher education, 30 per cent sitting on board of companies and the rest with his family.

Infosys' journey started in 1981 with an initial capital investment of Rs 10,000. More than 30 years later, its revenues have grown to Rs 27000 crore. Seven entrepreneurs - NR Narayana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani, NS Raghavan, S Gopalakrishnan, SD Shibulal, K Dinesh and Ashok Arora - set up what was then called Infosys Consultants Private Limited.

Infosys' journey started in 1981 with an initial capital investment of Rs 10,000. More than 30 years later, its revenues have grown to Rs 27,000 crore.

Seven entrepreneurs - NR Narayana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani, NS Raghavan, S Gopalakrishnan, SD Shibulal, K Dinesh and Ashok Arora - set up what was then called Infosys Consultants Private Limited.

Among the founders, a few left Infosys over the years. The first to exit was Ashok Arora, who sold all his stocks in the then unlisted company and settled in the US. Raghavan retired as joint managing director in 2000. Nandan Nilekani stepped down to head the government's unique indentification (UID) project. K Dinesh recently announced his retirement.

Kris Gopalakrishnan and SD Shibulal are still serving as board members while NR Narayana Murthy continues to be the chairman and the chief mentor. He is due for retirement in August.