Nilekani stages a comeback on Infosys board

Company appoints him as non-executive chairman

Putting to rest all the speculations, Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys on Thursday returned to company's board as the non-executive chairman of the IT major, which he had left a decade ago to join UIDAI.

The Infosys board appointed Nilekani after the resignation of R Seshasayee as chairman of the board, which was accepted. Along with Seshasayee, co-chairman Ravi Venkatesan, executive vice-chairman Vishal Sikka, directors Jeffrey Lehman and John Etchemendy also resigned from the board.

“The Board of Directors has unanimously approved the appointment of Nandan Nilekani as the Non Executive Chairman of the Board, effective immediately,” the company said in a statement.

Among his many achievements, Nilekani has led the implementation of one of the world’s biggest technology initiatives of the government, Aadhaar programme, which has now enrolled over a billion Indians. Prior to taking over as Chairman of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), agency responsible for issuing identification numbers, Nilekani served as the CEO of the IT doyen from 2002 to 2007.

Sources told DH that Nilekani would be seeing the transition of the company’s executive leadership and is expected to stay on the board for 12-14 months. “The company and institutional investors are looking at Nilekani to groom a CEO who is of independent mind,” sources privy to the development said.

Company’s outgoing executive vice chairman Vishal Sikka also put the onus of team building on the Nilekani, stating, “Last week I said that my remaining on the Infosys Board was to primarily enable a smooth transition. In Nandan, we have found an ideal leader to manage this transition.”

Both Seshasayee and Sikka were scheduled to retire from Infosys in March next year, while Lehman, was scheduled to retire from the board in April 2018, “With Vishal's departure, Infosys is entering into a stage in which the time demands on independent directors will be compounded even further. In light of the other demands on my time, I think it best if I accelerate my departure from the Board by a few months to allow a new independent director to start in this important role,” Lehman said.

Other than Nilekani and UB Pravin Rao, company’s interim CEO and MD, the board of the company has been reduced to strength of just five members — Roopa Kudva, Punita Kumar-Sinha, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, D N Prahlad and D Sundaram.

Following the resignation of Sikka on last Friday, the company’s shares have declined by almost 15% prompting worried domestic institutional investors to write to the Infosys board and Murthy to bring back Nilekani. On Wednesday, 12 investors wrote a letter to the board seeking the return of Nilekani in a suitable position.

Earlier in the day, a plethora of ex-Infoscions expressed solidarity with co-founder of Infosys N R Narayana Murthy along with questioning the the company’s alleged cover-up of Panaya probe.

In an open letter to the board of the IT major, that has been caught in a tussle with Murthy, ex-Infoscions have sought a data-oriented response from the board with fact based explanations.