Infosys culture war

The ugly slugfest between the promoters and professionals of the Bangalore-based blue-chip company Infosys Technologies Ltd (ITL, annual revenue: Rs.67,304 crore; headcount: 190,000) is reminiscent of the recent showdown in Tata Sons Ltd, the holding company of the Mumbai-based Tata Group (Rs.705,000 crore) in which the promoter family’s wily scion Ratan Tata, who found his successor Cyrus Mistry unwilling to suffer backseat driving, sent the latter packing after a four-year stint, in humiliating circumstances. Similarly, N.R. Narayan Murthy, S.D. Shibulal, Kris Gopalakrishnan and other promoters of ITL who succeeded each other as chief executives after Narayan Murthy without conspicuous success, are finding it hard to stomach the high-risk, big-game hunting style of Vishal Sikka, who was appointed managing director and chief executive of Infosys in June 2014.  At the heart of the face-off between the aged promoters and the energetic, reportedly rumbustious Sikka is the attempted transformation of ITL from a company which has cashed in on labour arbitrage, i.e, the huge hourly wage difference in the US and Western nations and India for engineers and IT professionals, into a full service transnational corporation. Although Murthy and the promoters aspired to transform the company into a major business consultancy multinational, ITL remains essentially an “IT coolie” company.  In a new era after the global financial crisis of 2008 and imminent protectionism in the US, Sikka is in a hurry to transform Infosys into a hi-tech business consultancy and solutions multinational. Having set himself the stiff target to boost ITL’s global revenue to $20 billion (Rs.133,276 crore) by 2020, the new CEO isn’t bothered about penny-pinching issues. Operating mainly out of Silicon Valley, USA he has not only convinced the board to pay him a Silicon Valley salary, he has also fired several nuisance value professionals with generous severance packages, which has shocked Murthy and other promoters of the company who pride themselves on their often mean-spirited frugality. For instance, a duly constituted Infosys-EducationWorld Young Achievers Award which involved an annual expenditure of Rs.5-6 lakh was abrogated by Murthy on the ground of “no bang for the buck”.  Sikka is right. It’s time for Infosys to shed its provincialism and start roughing it out with the big boys worldwide.    Proof of maturity As a rule, your over-burdened editor rarely has time for popular Bollywood cinema or its regional clones. With their unreal story lines, faux sets, unchecked violence, melodrama and stereotypical song-n-dance routines, Bollywood movies are an insult to anyone with intellectual pretensions. However, the fantastic box office success of Aamir Khan starrer Dangal, produced by the socially conscious actor, marks the long overdue coming-of-age of popular Indian cinema. The unprecedented (and rising) box office revenue of Rs.731 crore of this 141-minute movie has proved perhaps for the first time that it’s possible for an intelligently scripted film with a credible story line to succeed at the box office. It’s proof also of the growing maturity and sense of discrimination of the Indian public, which has been continuously infantalised by…