New CEO Sikka to revive Infosys with tech, boardroom savvy

Infosys CEO designate Vishal Sikka with cofounder Narayana Murthy. Photo: PTI

Vishal Sikka is equally comfortable designing cutting-edge software as he is negotiating in the boardroom, skills the new chief executive of Infosys Ltd will need to turn around a company that was once the poster child of India's $108 billion IT services industry.

Sikka, a former senior executive at German software giant SAP AG, takes over as India's second-largest IT services exporter struggles to retain staff and market share.

Some investors blame its outgoing risk-averse management for blunting the innovative edge of a company that was once the employer of choice for young IT workers.

Employees at SAP and business associates said Sikka was seen as the bridge between the "brains" - the IT engineers that helped him create the flagship HANA programme and the besuited executives that spearheaded product sales globally. He was also SAP's first chief technology officer.

"He was on the board at SAP and he ran all development on the technology and application side. That says it right there," said Donald Feinberg, a US-based executive at IT consultants Gartner who used to be the lead analyst for SAP and who has known Sikka for five years.

Sikka's skills will come in handy as investors expect him to move Infosys towards high-margin, high tech services like cloud computing and away from the low-margin, labour intensive outsourcing contracts that it battles for against peers Tata Consultancy Services Ltd and Wipro Ltd.

Colleagues say he is a demanding but communicative manager whose persistence helped bring HANA to life. The programme, which took several years to develop, analyses large amounts of data quickly and clients include Unilever PLC, Lenovo Group Ltd, Lonmin PLC, Deloitte & Touche and Procter & Gamble Co.

"Vishal's a visionary and one of the smartest guys in the Valley," said Vivek Ranadive, CEO of U.S. firm Tibco Software who has been friends with Sikka since meeting him at an airport seven years ago. They hit it off by talking about surfing in Hawaii. FRESH BLOOD

Sikka, 47, is an American citizen who was born in Vadodara in Gujarat. He currently lives in Los Altos, California with his wife and two boys and has said he plans to travel to India for the new job.

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New CEO Sikka to revive Infosys with tech, boardroom savvy