India's Infosys CEO and MD Sikka resigns

Infosys Ltd said on Friday Vishal Sikka has resigned as managing director and chief executive of the company with immediate effect.

U B Pravin Rao has been appointed as interim-managing director and chief executive, India's no 2 software services exporter said in a statement. Sikka has now been appointed as executive vice-chairman, Infosys added.

Sikka has blamed "a continuous stream of distractions and disruptions" for his resignation, reported Hindustan Times. He became the member of the executive board at the German software firm SAP, and became the first CEO not to be a founder.



However, soon after, he was in troubled waters. One of the points of contention between Infosys board and the company's founders has been the salary Sikka should attain, and the way he steered the company.

Infosys’ legendary founder NR Narayana Murthy claimed in an email to some of his advisors that he had been told by at least three independent directors of the company that Sikka was more chief technology officer (CTO) material than CEO material, Mint reported on Thursday.

Narayana Murthy, co-founder of Infosys, has publicly bashed the company in the last few months. "I have nothing against Dr Vishal Sikka. I enjoy spending time with him. I have never commented about his strategy or its execution," Murthy wrote in an email. "My problem is with the governance at Infosys. I believe the fault lies with the current board."

A Hindustan Times report in February noted that Sikka had changed the way Infosys works: overhauling the organisational structure, increasing the thrust on artificial intelligence and setting the goal for 2020: achieve $20 billion in revenue at 30 per cent net margin (23 per cent) and revenue per employee of $80,000 ($49,000).



Sikka was transforming the company towards areas of automation, internet of things, and analytics. “I am a kshatriya warrior. I am here to stay and fight,” he said in a TV interview in February. Even though with the arrival of other IT companies, Infosys was facing competition, Sikka vowed to "stay and fight."

“It is true that I could be doing a far less stressful job for far more money much more easily. There is no doubt about that,” Sikka told Hindustan Times in an interview last year.