Ninth senior-level exit at Infosys; Chandrashekar Kakal quits

In the ninth senior-level exit at Infosys since the return of co-founder N R Narayana Murthy, Chandrashekar Kakal, operational head of the India business unit, has resigned.

Kalal, who joined the Bangalore-based firm in 1999, holds operational responsibility for the India business unit and is responsible for application development, maintenance, testing and infrastructure management services worldwide. He also serves on the board of Infosys BPO.

"On March 19, 2014, Chandrashekar Kakal, Senior Vice President and Member of the Executive Council, conveyed his intention to resign from the company effective April 18, 2014," Infosys said in a US SEC filing today.

This is the ninth top-level exit at India's second-largest IT services exporter since Narayana Murthy returned from retirement last June to head the firm and put it back on a high-growth trajectory.

While Infosys global sales head Basab Pradhan quit in July 2013, the firm's global manufacturing head Ashok Vemuri resigned in August to join rival iGate as CEO. Stephen Pratt, who co-founded Infosys consulting, stepped down in November.

In September, Infosys Head of BPO sales in Australia Kartik Jayaraman and BPO Head Latin America Humberto Andrade quit. A month earlier, Vice President and Financial Services Head for the Americas Sudhir Chaturvedi left.

Murthy has been making a series of changes at Infosys, including cutting costs at on-site work locations and shifting focus to winning large outsourcing projects.

Last month, Murthy said Infosys, which employs 1.5 lakh people, may hand over pink slips to those who did not add value despite high salaries as it looks to cut costs and increase operational efficiency.

"One of my tasks was to ensure the identified people who were receiving very high salaries but were not contributing as much as we wanted, were either given opportunities where they can add value to the company or they could seek opportunities elsewhere," he said at a Bank of America Merrill Lynch investor conference.