New CEO, new teams: Corporate Shuffles in IT firms

From one shore to another: Amid the Q3 results announcement for the seasonally-muted quarter, Indian IT firms are roping in senior executives from rival firms. 

The most recent switch has been for Tata Consultancy Services’ (TCS) chief marketing officer Rajashree R, who has joined Pune-headquartered IT firm Tech Mahindra as its chief growth officer for America strategic verticals. 

Rajashree joins other top-level appointments in Tech Mahindra under CEO Mohit Joshi’s ongoing leadership restructuring.

She took to LinkedIn on January 22 to share that her search for ‘where next’ ended at Tech Mahindra, with a focus on growing Americas, a strategic market for the company.

“Where next" was the question facing me for the past several months—another IT company, smaller, bigger, start-up, software company, etc. I knew, more than anything else, that what mattered to me was a vibrant, dynamic, and agile environment; good people to work with; an opportunity to learn and grow; and, most importantly, the right culture and value system,” a part of her post read.

What is common between Rajshree’s present and previous firm is the restructuring bid under new CEOs - K Krithivasan at TCS and Mohit Joshi at Tech Mahindra.

Rajashree had been at TCS for two decades, her last role being vice president for the company after she stepped down as CMO in 2023. following which she continued to work as a vice president at TCS. 

At Tech Mahindra, Joshi roped in former Infosys colleagues - Richard Lobo as Chief People Officer, Atul Soneja as Chief Operating Officer and Peeyush Dubey, who joined Tech Mahindra as Chief Marketing and Communications officer in November 2023.

Another top IT firm, LTIMindtree saw Debasis Chatterjee as the new CEO for the combined entity in 2022. Chatterjee was at Cognizant before joining Mindtree, and later chosen to lead the merged entity.

Earlier this year on January 5, Mukund Rao, Chief Business Officer and senior vice president for IT services firm LTIMindtree departed from the company, as per an exchange filing. The company has appointed three new CBOs for its business units in the previous quarter– retail and consumer goods, manufacturing, and life sciences and healthcare.

Rao posted the update on Linkedin on January 22, saying he was embracing new challenges to push himself again.

The company saw the appointment of Amazon Web Services (AWS) senior executive Shuchi Sarkar as its new chief marketing officer, after Paresh Vankar left the company in October 2023.

Another IT services company, Wipro in January has appointed Vikas Gupta as senior vice president (SVP) and head of CIS, Wipro FullStride Cloud. Gupta, a Tech Mahindra veteran, was at the company for over 16 years, his last role in the company being SVP and global business head for Cloud and Infrastructure at Tech Mahindra.

Notably, Wipro and Infosys had accused another IT company, Cognizant of poaching employees after the former’s CFO Jatin Dalal joined Cognizant in the same role. Infosys has accused Cognizant of poaching over 20 of its employees, as per reports.

Retaliating to the allegations, Cognizant India Chairman and Managing Director Rajesh Nambiar said “it is a free world” and that companies enforcing contracts with employees is “their prerogative.”