Gopalakrishan new CEO of Infosys, Shibulal COO

Bangalore, Apr 15: Nandan M Nilekani has stuck to the Infosys tradition. After Narayana Murthy and Mohandas Pai voluntarily passed the baton to others in the Infosys management, Mr Nilekani, who is CEO and managing director of the company, is now taking on a new role that of executive co-chairman. Mr Kris Gopalakrishan will step into his shoes and Mr Shibulal will be the new COO.

In his new avatar, the 52-year old Nilekani, who took on the mantle of CEO from Mr Murthy five years ago, is expected to don the role of an image driver and brand ambassador for the company while leading transformational and strategic initiatives, which was hitherto mandated only to NRN.

"We have in Infosys a tradition where people create space for others to do well. NRN did that, Pai did that for V Balakrishnan (who is now CFO ). I want to continue with it", Mr Nilekani said on Friday.

He promised to stay actively engaged with the company, "In a society where there is dynastic rule and cronyism and patronage, we are setting an example through meritocracy".

Mr Claude Smadja, chairman of the nomination committee for the process of choosing Nilekani's successor, said: ''We had extensive discussions on how to choose the successor and whether we should look at only the current Infosys management or look outside Infy ranks as well. We then had talks with the management and Kris and then decided on the nominations.''

The new changes will be effective from June 22, 2007. Infosys chief mentor N R Narayana Murthy will stay on as the non-executive chairman.While Mr Shibulal will continue to be based in Bangalore, his successor to head the North American operations will be decided soon.

While the management change has come as a bit of a surprise to analysts, they believe that this is the way to go forward for Infosys. Mr Sudin Apte, senior analyst and country head (India), Forrester Research, told ET: "As Infosys prepares itself to fight in the market dominated by IBM and Accenture, they believe that they can leverage the Infosys leadership - especially Nandan Nilekani and Narayana Murthy. By working on the boards of World Economic Forum, Bill Clinton Foundation, and engaging with the boards of several Fortune 500 firms, they have access to the boardrooms of top operations. It helps in opening the doors at a senior level - both at customer organisations and prospects".

Analysts don't expect the move to impact the operations of the company either. As one of them put it, "Infosys is system-driven and very institutionalised. So we don't see any impact operationally".

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