Vishal Sikka Resigns as CEO of Infosys

Vishal Sikka was a top executive at the German multinational company SAP. Then, in June 2014, he was appointed as the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) and MD (Managing Director) of the Indian IT giant Infosys.

Today morning (18th August 2017), the Infosys Board of Directors accepted his resignation but this has come as a huge blow for the company, as Sikka has been brilliant for them over the last three years. He will continue as the company’s Executive Vice-Chairman.

In the meantime, the board has appointed Pravin Rao as the interim Managing Director and CEO, who will report directly to Vishal Sikka. Sikka will still play a vital role in the company’s strategic initiatives, as well as in technology development and other fields.

The stock price of Infosys took a beating early in Friday morning’s trade session, having dropped over 7% by mid-day. seeing the company’s credentials and performance over the years, this would be a 100% buy indicator from here on. Have a look:

Here’s an excerpt from the resignation email from Vishal Sikka:

“Dear Board Colleagues, 

Over the last few days, since our earlier call, I’ve met Sesh several times, talked to you individually at length, and spent time thinking things thru with Vandana. During this time, one of our employees, Sandeep Karamongikar, died in his sleep, likely of a massive heart attack. He was working on the chatbot frontend in Nia. Also over the weekend, in possibly the greatest demonstration of AI capability ever, a bot built by the researchers at OpenAI (yes, that OpenAI), defeated the world’s best players of DOTA2, a multiplayer online video game, a game where the bot learned to play entirely from scratch. Further demonstrating that the force to automate routine, even advanced, activities is an unstoppable and exponential one. And the Charlottesville incident here in the US demonstrated once again the power of words and silences to cause real damage, or to heal.

After much reflection, I have concluded that it is indeed time for me to leave my current positions as MD and CEO, and I have communicated my resignation to Sesh. I will be working closely with Sesh, Ravi, Pravin, with all of you, and the senior management team to plan out the details and the timelines to ensure a smooth transition and in the meantime, continue our work without disruption, and ensuring that we protect our company, the employees, the clients, and the interests of every shareholder. You can count on my commitment to this…”