Is Infosys the new CEO factory?

It’s been a month of top movements across IT companies, with the first announcement being of the resignation of Infosys President Mohit Joshi to take on the mantle of Tech Mahindra CEO later this year.

Joshi resigned a little over four months after Ravi Kumar S, the company’s former President, left the company. Kumar took over as the CEO of Cognizant in January. Both Joshi and Kumar were potential candidates for the position of Infosys’ CEO in the future, but Salil Parekh, the current CEO, had his contract renewed for five more years in July 2022.

Read: Cognizant’s Ravi Kumar needs to hire seniors, stem attrition to see growth: Moshe Katri

A note by Kotak Institutional Equities said that the roles handled by both were wide-ranging, but Infosys has a strong leadership bench to compensate for it. The portfolios of leaders who left Infosys to join competitors in the past have largely been handled well by their successors, it said.

“The opportunities [for Joshi and Kumar] granted larger roles in well-reputed organizations with good CEO compensation policies. Leadership talent at Infosys is well-recognized by the industry and has contributed to many CEOs for the IT services industry,” the note added.

Cognizant was also known as a CEO factory, having produced several executives who now lead other companies such as LTI Mindtree CEO Debashis Chatterjee, Firstsource’s Vipul Khanna, among others.

Kumar and Joshi are the latest in a line of former Infosys talent who have gone on to head companies.

Anshuman Das, the CEO of executive search and talent advisory firm Longhouse Consulting, told Moneycontrol that Infosys has been one of the progressive companies in this regard.

“They have produced a good number of CEOs because they’re a reasonably well-managed, well-governed company. That kind of system always produces good leaders, which can provide governance and scale,” he said.

However, he added that it doesn’t provide for a lot of entrepreneurial opportunities in such companies, which he said is the trait of more chaotic environments.

“Any great institution like Infosys is always a great factory for CEOs essentially, and Infosys definitely leads as far as IT success is concerned. Between Infosys and Cognizant most of the CEOs have come out. Wipro has been very good as far as the entrepreneurial-talent-producing capability is concerned,” he said.

He added every one of the five big IT services companies is unique in its own sense.

“We as a country are blessed to have a combination of these companies, which are entrepreneurial, producing great CEOs, and taking the whole industry to the next level. That’s how I see the ecosystem — that everyone has its own great utility,” he said. Moneycontrol