How Salil Parekh beat 29 other candidates to become Infosys CEO

Salil Satish Parekh was appointed as new CEO and MD of Infosys for a period of five years effective from January 2, 2018 on Saturday afternoon

left behind nearly 29 candidates to reach Infosys' helm, a position which was vacant nearly for four months, as he had " a holistic set of attributes which swung in his favour."

Salil Satish Parekh was appointed as new CEO and MD of Infosys for a period of five years effective from January 2, 2018 on Saturday afternoon. Salil Parekh will be replacing company’s interim CEO U B Pravin Rao who took charge after the resignation of Vishal Sikka, earlier this year.

Salil Parekh, who was also serving as the Member of Group Management Board at Capgemini, left behind nearly 29 candidates to reach Infosys’ helm, a position which was vacant nearly for four months, as he had ” a holistic set of attributes which swung in his favour.”

Salil Parekh’s appointment was made on the recommendation of the Nomination and Remuneration Committee which concluded its global search for a CEO & MD of Infosys on Saturday. One of the committee’s members and Biocom MD Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw told CNBC-TV18 that Salil Parekh’ appointment was made after applying a set of metrics, from working experience in the industry to the cultural understanding of the country.

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw said that the committee looked for someone with good experience, a global understanding, knowledge about new trends in the sector, who played important role in the sector, who managed a large workforce, understand whole services sector, and culturally who had a good understanding of working in India. Salil Parekh, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, said had a “holistic set of attributes which swung in his favour”.

“We went through a rigorous process of interviewing the shortlisted candidates from which we finally came to a final list of candidates and Salil was one of them and we basically believed that he was a very holistically capable leader with the kind of attributes that we were looking for in terms of experience, in terms of market understanding, the strategic capabilities in terms of thinking about the future and of course the cultural understanding of the work in India,” Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw told CNBC-TV18.

Vishal Sikka resigned on August 18 following series of allegations by Narayana Murthy, mainly over Rs 1,250 crore acquisition of Israel based IT firm Panaya. Most board members including the co-chairman R Seshasayee resigned soon after, and co-chairman Ravi Venkatesan stepped down to continue as an independent director.

Within a week, Nandan Nilekani returned to the board of the company after a gap of about seven years as non-executive chairman, while Chief Operation Officer UB Pravin Rao was given interim charge of Managing Director and CEO on August 24.

http://www.financialexpress.com/industry/how-salil-parekh-beat-29-other-candidates-behind-to-become-infosys-ceo/960381/