Former Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka has posted a resignation mail for his employees after stepping down from Infoysys. Earlier, Sikka has resigned as the managing director and the CEO of Infosys with reports mentioning a tussle with founder Narayana Murthy.
Infosys has appointed Sikka as Executive Vice-Chairman and U.B. Pravin Rao as interim Managing Director and CEO of the company.
Sikka penned his thoughts in a blog, which is reproduced here in full:
Earlier today I resigned my position as MD & CEO of Infosys. 바카라 웹사이트Here is the mail I sent to our employees.바카라 웹사이트
--
Dear Friends,
After a lot of reflection, I have resigned from my position as your MD & CEO effective today.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트A succession process has been initiated, with Pravin serving as interim MD & CEO, and I will work closely with the Board and management team over the next few months to ensure a smooth transition. In addition, I have agreed to serve as Executive Vice Chairman on the Board to further ensure continuity until the new management is in place.
For days, indeed weeks, this decision has weighed on me. I have wrestled the pros and cons, the issues and the counterbalancing arguments. But now, after much thought, and considering the environment of the last few quarters, I am clear in my decision. It is clear to me that despite our successes over the last three years, and the powerful seeds of innovation that we have sown, I cannot carry out my job as CEO and continue to create value, while also constantly defending against unrelenting, baseless/malicious and increasingly personal attacks.
In 2014, we started with a very challenging set of conditions, and in the last three years, we have decisively turned things around.
Three years ago, I started this journey with a calling, to help reshape the company around innovation and entrepreneurship, to deliver breakthrough value for clients, and to help elevate our work, our standing, our selves, on the basis of a dual strategy, bringing together dualities of renew and new, automation and innovation, people and software, to show a new path forward in a time of unprecedented disruption within the industry and beyond. That time, around and before June 2014, was a difficult time. Our growth rates were low and attrition was high. There was a sense of apprehension all around and I came here to help enable a great transformation as our core business faced intense pricing pressure, and clients looked increasingly to innovative partners to help shape their digital futures. Now, a bit more than three years later, I am happy to see the company doing better in every dimension I can think of.
We have grown our revenues, from $2.13B in Q1FY15 to $2.65B this past Q1. We did so while keeping a strong focus on margins, closing this past quarter at 24.1% operating margin, beating some competitors for the first time in many years, and improving against most in our industry.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트Perhaps more importantly, our revenue per employee has grown for six quarters in a row. Our attrition has fallen, from 23.4% in Q1FY15 to 16.9% this past Q1, and high performer attrition is hovering at or below the single-digit threshold for a while now.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트We grew our $100M+ clients from 12 when I started, to 19, and increased our large deal wins from ~$1.9B in FY15 to ~$3.5B this past year. We’ve done all this while improving our overall utilization, to a 10-yr high this past quarter, and an all time high including trainees, while improving our cash reserves, rewarding employees with a new equity plan, and returning cash to our stakeholders. And we have done all this while improving our standing with clients to the highest ever in the 12 years since we’ve done our client satisfaction survey, and a jump of 22 points in CxO satisfaction.
A few days ago, Nitesh, Radha, and I met a client in our office in Palo Alto. It is one of the largest companies in the world - and the CIO was excited and proud about seeing automation come to life in their landscape.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트Her reaction to seeing many of our innovation projects, as well as our workspace itself, was thoroughly rewarding, and a testament to all we have achieved. She requested us to bring our innovative work and processes to everything we do with her team in a similar space, and even that we help them establish a similar presence for their company in the valley!바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트This is a sentiment I’ve often heard from clients who’ve visited our 12,000 sqft space here, that has seen 2200 visits over its ~27 months; clients where we saw much faster than average revenue growth following their visits. So, as I look back on the three years as CEO, what brings me the most joy is the new roads that all of you have traveled, the new frontiers that all of you have enabled.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트From embracing the new ideas in education, teaching ourselves Design Thinking like no one else ever has, learning AI, new development processes, and more, to applying these learnings via Zero Distance, a one-of-a-kind program of massive grassroots innovation, powered by education, by the amazing Zero Bench, and by your creative confidence.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트With 16500+ ideas generated, 2200+ of which have already been implemented, ZD is proof that innovation need not be the domain of a chosen few in some elite department, but is the prerogative of us all; proof that the extraordinary within each one of us can indeed be unleashed. To complement this grassroots innovation, we’ve launched 25+ new services that contributed 8.3% of our revenue last quarter, up from zero in April 2015.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트And our own new software business is now at 1.6% of revenue.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트Our AI platform, Nia, now with 160+ scenarios deployed at more than 70 clients, is helping drive both automation within the company, and breakthrough new business scenarios outside.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트Beyond new services and new software, we’ve ventured into new horizons, from our startup fund라이브 바카라 investments in promising new businesses, to the work we’ve done in the last 3 years in local hiring around the world, especially in the US, to the exemplary and inspiring work our US foundation has done in bringing computer science education and a culture of making, to the masses.
And I am proud of how we have upheld our values, our culture, our integrity, whilst we have gone about this massive transformation.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트I am proud of how our Board has worked, tirelessly, selflessly, these past quarters, despite intense, unfair, and often malicious and personal, criticism, in not only upholding our standards of governance and integrity, but also indeed raising these.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트None of our successes would be worthwhile for a moment, if this was not the case.
I was, and remain, passionate about the massive transformation opportunity for this company and industry, but we all need to allow the company to move beyond the noise and distractions.
Back in May 2014, when I first met many board colleagues, I thought of the road ahead as a road for the next 33 years of this iconic company. For Infosys is more than a company: it is an idea, a dream, a pioneering possibility.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트Back then I thought, just as I do today, that the time ahead called for a company that could show the way to a digital future, a future where our humanity, amplified by automation and software, would unleash our creativity, our imagination, to construct great worlds of our futures, and would do so powered by education, by our timeless value of learnability.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트Such an Infosys, whilst staying true to its core, to her values and timeless principles, would shine the light in an altogether different context, a different reality. Such an Infosys would be one where an individual라이브 바카라 entrepreneurship, ability to imagine and create, ability to learn, and to amplify themselves with software, with AI, would create a greater whole. Rather than an overarching system enabling the people, the people라이브 바카라 agility and imagination would create a greater system. Three years later, we can clearly see that the seeds of this idea have taken root and are growing, into beautiful new flowers and plants, and I see no reason why these cannot continue, and help shape our company라이브 바카라 future.
For sure this journey has been a difficult one.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트No one, especially me, thought it would be easy.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트Transformations are hard to begin with.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트A massive transformation, of such an iconic institution, with such groundbreaking achievements behind her, would be even tougher, and the exponential rates of change all around us, further amplified by geopolitical matters, would add that much more headwind.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트But all this was known, and clear, and in many ways added to the calling that I felt.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트For as the legendary architect Daniel Burnham said, “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir man라이브 바카라 blood.”
But after much contemplation I have decided to leave because the distractions, the very public noise around us, have created an untenable atmosphere. I deeply believe in creating value in an atmosphere of freedom, trust and empowerment. Life is too short to engage in battles of opinions in the public, these add no value, take critical time and focus away from the business, and indeed add more to the noise, to the eardrum buzz, as I wrote to you a few months ago. The founding principle of the strategy I laid out for our renewal was personal empowerment, working in an entrepreneurial environment.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트I need this for my own work as well.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트Steve Jobs, in his famous commencement speech at my alma mater, said:
“Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else라이브 바카라 life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people라이브 바카라 thinking. Don’t let the noise of other opinions drown your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become.”
I now need to move forward, and return to an environment of respect, trust and empowerment, where I can take on new lofty challenges, as can each of you.
As Steve Jobs said, I must follow my heart and my intuition, build my buildings, give my givings, and do something else.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트Over the next weeks and months, I look forward to working with the Board and management to create a smooth transition, and simultaneously staring into the great unknown, and to doing something great, something purposeful, for the times ahead.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트And also to spend some time with my loved ones.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트I’ve been away from home far too often and far too long.
As I completed my three years recently, many people asked me if I have any regrets.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트This question is more apt today and the answer is a clear NO. Not for a second.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트However difficult the noise of the last several months has been, I wouldn’t trade our time together for anything. I would not give up the experience of seeing the gleam in your eyes as you described a new idea, invention, or contribution. You worked on these confidently, without reward, without arrogance, showing exactly the kind of creative confidence that David Kelley talked about in Design Thinking – a wonderful thing to witness.
I am deeply grateful for the immense support and love I’ve received from all of you, from our worthy clients for whom we do our life라이브 바카라 work, and by our shareholders across the globe.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트I am grateful for your trust, confidence and friendship, and am thankful to our team of amazing leaders, who will help lead our company to greatness.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트To my first Infoscion colleague and trusted friend Ranga, who enabled us to achieve the things we achieved, to the amazing Ravi, a pocket of passion and energy and execution excellence, to the calm and steadfast Mohit, who introduced me to the band of brothers and lived it, day after day, to the larger than life Rajesh, with his great heart and big laugh, to Binod, a veritable bulldozer brother with his broad shoulders and broader smile, to the one of a kind Ramadas, the architect and protector of our magnificent campuses with his indomitable spirit and world-class excellence, to the always smiling Deepak who helped live the strategy, to Krish and the best HR team in the world, especially the extraordinary Richard, Nanju, Shruthi and their amazing team for helping to carry out some of the craziest and most amazing people initiatives, to Inderpreet, a new voice to the team, a voice of calm, strength, integrity and a stability that far belies the little time she라이브 바카라 been with us, to Jayesh and our entire finance team for their dedication, their impeccable meticulous integrity and world-class excellence, and especially to my partner, friend, and pillar of strength, Pravin, who carried all the load in the world, with a smile, impeccable integrity and the most amazing grace, and will now lead you to the next phase of our company's growth.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트To Zaiba, Bala sir, Nagaraju, Hari and many others for making it possible for me to be me and to do my work, to my Palo Alto family: Sanjay, Abdul, Navin, Ritika, Barbara, Tao, Vinod, Shabana, April, Sudhir and others who have stood by me and have given up so much to be a part of this journey and contributed so much to it, and indeed to thousands of Infoscions who’ve made it all matter.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트I am thankful to Sesh and our entire board for their unfailing support and confidence in me throughout this journey.
Together we have achieved a lot.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트Even in the midst of all of the distractions, even as the tendency was to return to the familiar, we still managed to persevere and make wonderful progress. We have laid the foundation for the next 30 years of Infosys, and I feel deeply proud to have worked alongside all of you in sowing the seeds that will return this company to the bellwether it once was.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트As you’ve all often reminded us, Infosys is no bigger and no smaller than any of us, the people, the Infoscions.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트You are the ones that will take Infosys to the next 30 years and beyond.바카라 웹사이트바카라 웹사이트As I think about the time ahead, for all of us, I can only see us powered by a freedom from the known, of renewing ourselves to thrive in the time ahead. Each one of you has vindicated my deeply held belief that people are capable of doing more, achieving more, being more, than they ever imagined possible. So, keep pushing yourself to do better at whatever you are good at, but also learning to do things you have never done before, indeed, nobody has ever done before. I know I will be doing the same.
The Board, Pravin, and I will communicate additional details as we move forward in this transition, and meanwhile, we continue our work as is. I wish all of you the very best in your journeys ahead.
V
