Two executives quit Infosys

In a surprise announcement Infosys said its founder member and Head of Quality and Information System K Dinesh and Human Resources Director T V Mohandas Pai will resign from the Board and also relinquish their executive positions from June 11, 2011.

The development took company observers by surprise as both were with the company for many years—Dinesh (one of the seven founders) for 30 years and Pai for 17 years—and did their job well to elevate Infosys to a $ 6-billion outsourcing giant today. They haven’t reached their retirement age either as Pai is 52 and Dinesh is 57. 

But the executives and Gopalakrishnan claimed that they were not asked to leave and were quitting the company for personal reasons. Pai said he first told Chairman Narayana Murthy about his plan nine months ago. Murthy then asked Pai if he had the ambition to become the CEO of the company. When Pai said “No,” Murthy told him not to quit.

In a statement Murthy said: “Mohan has been an early adopter and a keen anchor builder of Infosys. It is difficult to imagine Infosys without Mohan’s passion, commitment and intellect. He is taking this painful decision, since he has much bigger projects in the horizon - nation building.”

Explaining his departure from the company, Pai said he is stepping aside to make room for the younger generation.

“For the new growth phase in future, Infosys needs a new set of younger people to lead the company.” Pai said. “In the last 17 years after I joined, Infy has grown from $ 10 million in 1994 to $6 billion now. It is now time to push for one of the top three companies in the world in the next five years.”

Pai is of the view that it is very important to prepare for the future rather than be faced with the calamity at some point in time as leadership is most critical for companies. He also said that in future he will not join any company as executive but spend about 30 per cent of his time with corporates as director. He will spend another 30 per cent time in the field of education and the balance time with his family. “I don’t know if my wife would like the idea,” he said in a lighter vein. 

Explaining why he was stepping down from the company he helped build from the scratch along with other promoters, K Dinesh said he wanted to lead a peaceful life as he was finding his job to be very stressful.

“We have built Infosys brick-by-brick... I am sure in future it will be in the hands of very efficient managers who will help it grow faster.” Dinesh said he will spend time for charitable organisations.  He, of course, does not need a job for survival as he and his family hold 1.44 crore Infosys equity shares from which the dividend income alone was Rs 86.40 crore in 2010-11.