Crisis in Infosys: Men who Narayana Murthy thought were assets turning out to be liabilities
“It’s difficult to imagine Infosys without Bala’s passion, commitment, and intellect.” That was Friday’s farewell tribute of N R Narayana Murthy, executive chairman, to his beloved colleague. Of late, Murthy has been doing this rather frequently.But according to industry insiders, Murthy has a very clear vision, imagination if you will, of how Infosys is going to shape up over the next few years as he oversees a difficult transition that is pushing the old order out and ushering in a new brigade to the software behemoth’s helm.The transition’s not proving to be smooth. There’s persistent talk among industry experts of intense power struggle. The old order, it seems, is not exactly giving way for upstarts, although media statements after every high-profile executive exit would like the world to believe otherwise. There are whispers that Murthy’s grip on Infy has been tightening, slowly but surely. “Watch out for more changes within the next year – leaders from within are being elevated; the entire company is being restructured,” said analyst Nitin Padmanabhan of Espirito Santo Securities.The Murthy-led recast will see Infy eventually having a play in not just in traditional outsourcing, but in onshoring (more local people at global delivery centres) and non-linear businesses (big data, cloud, analytics, mobility).This shift in priorities, insiders vouch, is at the root of recent executive tumult. At least five out of the eight exits so far, one Infy insider said on condition of anonymity, were forced by Murthy, while the other three (Ashok Vemuri, V Balakrishnan and Goparaju) apparently quit, realising that their decades of loyalty and “passion, commitment and intellect” would not logically culminate in their elevation to the corner suite.These very seniors were found wanting as Infy was upstaged by firms like Cognizant, losing huge chunk of its market share, something that brought about Murthy’s second innings in the first place, said Dhananjay Sinha, an ex-Infoscion who now works as head strategist at brokerage Emkay Global. “They were unwilling to be more agile and flexible to change after Murthy’s return.”