Insiders elevated to head Infosys BPO and KPO divisions

Infosys Technologies has finalised the new heads for its business process outsourcing subsidiary, Infosys BPO, and the knowledge process outsourcing practice.

Sticking to its strategy of giving the next generation of leaders bigger opportunities within the company, the company, India's second largest in information technology services, has elevated Swaminathan D ('Swami' Swaminathan) - the current COO and senior vice president of Infosys BPO - to the position of CEO and MD. And, Kishor Gummaraju - who was earlier AVP and head of consumer packaged goods solutions at Infosys - has been made head of the KPO practice.

The company is expected to make a formal announcement regarding these after the announcement of their results on January 12. The post of CEO and MD of Infosys BPO was vacant since Amitabh Chaudhry quit tojoin HDFC Life in November last year. And the exit of Joydeep Mukherjee, VP and head of knowledge services (KPO practice), laid vacant the post of KPO head.

Infosys had considered five candidates, all from within the company for the coveted post of MD and CEO of Infosys BPO. "We have shortlisted five contenders for the post and all of them are from within the company. The BPO CEO is going to be hunted from inside and hopefully, we will finalise the name by January 1," Nandita Gurjar, senior VP and group head for HR had said earlier.

Other than Swaminathan, who joined the company in 2004 from Eicher, the name of Ritesh Idnani, head of worldwide sales and marketing, Infosys BPO was also considered for the post.

The company is said to have respected the seniority factor and upheld the practice of elevating the COOs to the post of CEO and MD. Amitabh Chaudhry was also COO with Infosys BPO before being elevated to the top post after the exit of Akshaya Bhargav in March 2006.

It is learnt that Infosys decided to select Gummaraju as KPO head because of his consulting background. Gummaraju has a Bachelor's degree in electronics and telecommunication engineering and an MBA, with more than 17 years of experience in the retail and CPG (consumer packaged goods) industry, the last one being with Unilever as a commercial manager.

"We strongly believe that we must develop our next generation of leaders internally and we must fill up these vacant positions internally. It is only when we find that nobody is qualified internally will we consider outside candidates," Infosys MD and CEO S Gopalakrishnan had earlier told Business Standard.