Vishal Sikka quitting as Infosys CEO exposes the ugly belly of corporate India
Having freshly resigned from his contentious post as the CEO and MD of Infosys, Vishal Sikka cuts a tragic figure in the stink and brawl of corporate India and its boardroom battles. His resignation letter is one that exposes the deep fault lines that divide and splinter the unusually competitive but uncharacteristically innovation-resistant major corporate houses, particularly Infosys, perhaps also the famed Tata group. Sikka's resignation becomes another sorry milestone for Infosys and its dwindling image in the fast-changing technology sector the world over.
Much like the fallout between Cyrus Mistry and the Tata group, innovation seems unappreciated in major business houses. In the case of Sikka, as his resignation letter lays bare, mammoth obstacles and bickering from co-founder Narayana Murthy, whose relentless assaults and public badmouthing of Sikka are now stuff of lore, were the reason why the work environment became increasingly vitiated, and ultimately unsustainable.
Sikka, who joined Infosys as its MD and CEO in 2014, wrote:
“This continuous drumbeat of distractions and negativity over the last several months/quarters, inhibits our ability to make positive change and stay focused on value creation. Addressing the noise by itself is damaging; hundreds of hours of my own time has gone into this recently. But the structural challenges this engenders within the organisation, has a very damaging effect on our ability to carry out any kind of a transformation, especially one that is as fundamental as transforming from a cost-oriented to an innovation-oriented value delivery to clients.”
This is particularly toxic, and Sikka finally articulating in public what he fought against for over a year, damages the already sinking reputation of a company that’s now mired in old-school hypocrisies, becoming a South Indian Brahmin club seeped in the savarna prejudices taken right after Murthy. Giving hearsay and malicious gossip legitimation by posting letters of the humiliating kind, mentioning confidential exchanges in public, and generally allowing an air of sanctimony to overwhelm a possible transformation of a company into a solutions and innovation-oriented firm, rather than simply a glorified back alley of the Silicon Valley.
Sikka wrote:
“I came here to help navigate the company through what I saw as a massive transformation opportunity, to transform our company and restore strong profitable growth, as well as help transform the business of our customers. I came to do this with the power of technology, given my experiences with similar transformations, my background in AI, and the structural changes that I saw happening in the IT services industry. This needed new skills, new thinking, new initiatives, and a transformation in the culture, from a cost-oriented value delivery, to entrepreneurship oriented value delivery. You have heard me articulate this many times before.
This type of a transformation has always been a passion for me, indeed I took this job for this reason. We have achieved much in the last 3+ years, and for sure we can all be proud of the powerful seeds of transformation that have already been sowed. No one anticipated the additional headwinds like the geo-political disruptions (Brexit, Trump, visa etc.) that made this transformation even more challenging, but also rewarding. But, the distractions that we have seen, the constant drumbeat of the same issues over and over again, while ignoring and undermining the good work that has been done, take the excitement and passion out of this amazing journey.”
It is important to dwell for a while on Sikka’s past as a competent Silicon Valley guy, who wanted Infosys to walk shoulder to shoulder with the innovations and frontier research that was defining the lightning-fast developing global technology sector. A doctorate from Stanford University, and after a stellar stint at the German tech behemoth SAP SE, Sikka joined Infosys in 2014 with the bid to overhaul the company in keeping with the tsunami of changes and app-based technology overflow in the sector.
Sikka’s penchant for tech-driven user-friendly solutions led him to pioneer the concept of “timeless software”, which updates and renews software without any disruption in the experience. Sikka not only brought down company costs using automation and AI, but also introduced initiatives like Zero Distance, which is about finding innovative solution for every client, not being risk-averse, thinking out-of-the-box is its core principle.
This is precisely what Murthy and some of his board member friends had a problem with. This is typical of corporate houses bickering when in-fighting is dressed up as lack of “corporate governance”, not living up to longstanding standards, even if those standards themselves had become relics of the past.
The reason why the Infosys board members, some of whom having tried their best to negotiate a truce between the constantly assaulting Murthy and the quiet, hard-working Sikka, have a scathing take on the co-founder’s ceaseless interference.
The Infosys Board blamed Murthy’s “continuous assault” as the primary reason behind Sikka stepping down, and categorically said that the co-founder wouldn’t have a formal role in the company’s governance. The Board also firmly defended Sikka’s performance, and even his pay hike that wasn’t followed through, saying that under the ex-CEO, the company had delivered profitable revenue growth.
The Board indicated that the letter from Murthy “has been released to various media houses attacking the integrity of the Board and management alleging falling corporate governance standards in the company... Murthy’s letter contains factual inaccuracies, already-disproved rumours, and statements extracted out of context from his conversations with Board members...”
The Board’s statement added that it had tried finding “feasible solutions within the boundaries of law and without compromising its independence”. Because the stocks and share prices of Infosys have crashed as a result of Sikka’s exit, the Board asserted that “it will not be distracted by this misguided campaign” led by Murthy and would do its best to adhere to international best practices in the technology corporate sector.
However, the Board’s letter notwithstanding, what we see is the typical Indian mentality of middle-brow meddling into issues one had made a clean break of.
Murthy, despite founding Infosys, has increasingly become a burden on the company’s ability to respond to unexpected black swan events such as Brexit, or Trump’s election, which impacted the immigration and visa regime that Infosys had made use of for years.
It was time to focus on innovation and developing technology, instead of doing bit work for clients and not something on a grander scale, which would involve a change in the company’s home-spun branding as the back-channel of the global tech-corporate sector.
Sikka’s insistence on Zero Distance, customer-driven technology solutionism, something that has made Mark Zuckerberg a hero among billions of people, however, was the very reason he fell out with co-founder Murthy. This is like a parent not letting the child grow up into an adult to make decisions independent of the former.
Sikka’s exit is a high-decibel wake-up call for India’s crusty old corporate houses to end their quasi-feudal ways of handling business challenges and let true professionalism get its due credit. And, this isn’t a problem just with Infosys.
Also read: 7 boardroom break-ups that have rattled India Inc