Infosys: Why Pai quit
By Bala Shah

On Jan 2, 2010,  Techgoss had published an article titled ‘Infosys: campaign to become CEO?’ which detailed how after rival Nandan Nilekani left Infosys (Infy), HR boss Mohandas Pai was positioning himself to become the next CEO. And possibly step into Nandan’s shoes.

This Jan 2 article predicted: “An Infosys source close to the Board told Techgoss that internally it is expected that Shibulal will take on responsibility of CEO of Infosys in the next financial year”. Cut July, 2010, and Infosys co-founder Mr. Narayana Murthy confirmed the Techgoss prediction made in January, 2010.

Regular readers of Techgoss are well aware that a large number of our articles are crowd sourced.  People send in tips, story ideas and even articles. Many of our contributors have full times jobs in IT-ITES, and so prefer using a pseudonym.  A number of Tipsters from Infosys have given us an idea of what is happening inside the tech major.  In July, 2009, Techgoss has exclusively reported on how the Infosys APAC BPO Head had been jailed for insider trading and how quickly he was removed from every Infy website and forum.

Today (April 15, 2011), Infosys boss Mohandas Pai quit the organization.  Techgoss reached out to our Tipsters working at Bangalore Infosys and this is what they told us

“
Apart from his intellect, one of the main reasons Mohandas Pai did so well in Infosys was Infosys co-founder and leader, Mr. Murthy, had backed him at every step.  This backing ended when Mr. Murthy took a background role starting 2010.  Mr. Pai is bright but very abrasive and has rubbed most of the Infosys co-founders and Board members the wrong way.  He also has severe differences of opinion with the incoming CEO Shibulal.  There is no way Mr. Pai would ever report to new CEO Shibulal.   Because of the new equations, most of us in Infosys knew as far as 6 months ago that Mr. Pai would quit.  It is also just a matter of time before Pai protégés like Nandita Gurjar will quit the organization.
“

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