Infosys sees senior exit, elevates two other long-timers to fill the role
The company also, separately, has hired a new group general counsel, by luring away a top lawyer from rival Wipro, who brings Silicon Valley experience with her
Image: Vivek Prakash/Reuters
Infosys on Friday announced that Sandeep Dadlani, president and head of operations in the Americas, the company’s biggest market, will be leaving, after about 16 years at the Bengaluru-based IT services giant.
Dadlani, who was also the company’s global head of the unit serving customers in manufacturing, retail, consumer packaged goods and logistics, was seen as a key lieutenant of CEO Vishal Sikka over the last three years.
His departure comes at a time of multiple hard challenges for Infosys as well as the IT industry. Infosys has highlighted specific risks in its recently released annual report, including the ongoing changes to laws in the US and Britain and other markets that will make it a lot more difficult to send staff from India to work at client sites and instead require costlier local recruits.
Infosys is also facing internal strife with the board seen to be at loggerheads with a section of the shareholders led by founder NR Narayanamurthy, who has publicly criticised some of the company’s policies, including the pay packages of the CEO and the chief operating officer.
“Sandeep has played a key role in the success of Infosys over his career and in our transformation journey these past three years. We wish him the best in the journey ahead,” CEO Sikka said in a press release on Friday.
The company has appointed Karmesh Vaswani as the global head for retail, CPG and logistics (RCL) and Nitesh Banga as the global head of manufacturing. The appointments are effective July 15. Karmesh Vaswani and Nitesh Banga are both career Infoscions who have held strategic portfolios across the organization for nearly a decade, Infosy said in its release.
In a separate announcement, Infosys also named Inderpreet Sawhney as group general counsel, effective July 3. Inderpreet joins Infosys from smaller rival Wipro, where she was the general counsel. Prior to that, she served as managing partner of a midsized law firm in Silicon Valley and has also worked with ITC Limited as in-house counsel, according to Infosys’s press release.
Gopi Krishnan Radhakrishnan, who was the acting general counsel of Infosys from January, has also quit, according to the press release. Radhakrishnan was the interim top lawyer at the company after the previous general counsel and top compliance officer David Kennedy left. Founder Narayanamurthy had questioned the severance package given to Kennedy as well.
