Amitabh Chaudhry quits Infosys BPO

BANGALORE: Amitabh Chaudhry, who grew Infosys’ BPO revenues to $250 million last year from around $85 million in 2006, submitted his resignation

to the company in order to pursue other professional opportunities, an Infosys BPO spokesman confirmed on Monday.

“It is a professional move, however he will be around the company for some time,” an Infosys spokesman told ET. He declined to provide details about how long Mr Chaudhry will serve the company.

Mr Chaudhry took over from Akshaya Bhargava in 2005 to lead Infosys’ BPO business as its CEO, and played an instrumental role in several strategic initiatives including $38 million acquisition of McCamish Systems earlier this month. During his tenure, Infosys’ BPO revenues grew at around 72%.

Both Mr Chaudhry and Mr Mohandas Pai, Infosys’ head of HR could not be reached for comments on Monday. At the end of September this year, Infosys BPO had 16,033 employees on its payroll, down from around 17,327 professionals the company employed last year.

Infosys’ revenues from back office business were also marginally down to $71.3 million during the September quarter, from almost $72.5 million reported during the same period of last year.

Experts such as Arjun Srivastava, consultant at global executive search firm Egon Zehnder International said that apart from moving on to other assignments, many top honchos are also finding it the best time to start their own venture.

“We are observing that there is lot of attrition of executives in organisations as global companies are on an aggressive mode to hire these executives and some executives are finding this as this best time to start an entrepreneurial venture,” said Mr Srivastava.

Mr Chaudhry, an engineering graduate from the Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS), did his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. Shares of Infosys closed at Rs 2407.55 on the BSE on Monday, down by 0.88%.