Infosys COO Pravin Rao set to retire, company to announce new structure soon

Infosys on Wednesday said its Chief Operating Officer Pravin Rao will be retiring in the third quarter of the current fiscal and the company will announce a new corporate structure soon.

Infosys said it has “a very strong” set of leaders within the company and asserted that it does not foresee any challenges in the upcoming top level transition and succession of the role.

“We have already put together what we look into in terms of our structure, we will announce it internally in coming weeks. And then we will obviously communicate that outside. So very soon you will get to see what that is,” Salil Parekh, the CEO and MD of Infosys, told reporters.

Rao will be stepping down soon, and December 11 will be his last day in the company.

“We have a very strong set of leaders within the company, so I am extremely confident that we will have a structure that will work for our clients and for our business,” Parekh said.

As the Chief Operating Officer, Rao has overall strategic and operational responsibility for the entire portfolio of the company’s offerings.

Rao oversees the key functions of global delivery and business enablement.

He has over 35 years of industry experience. Since joining Infosys in 1986, he has held a number of senior leadership roles including Interim Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Head of Infrastructure Management Services, Delivery Head for Europe, and Head of Retail, Consumer Packaged Goods, Logistics and Life Sciences.

He was inducted on January 10, 2014 as a member of the board.

Rao is a member of the Stakeholder Relationship Committee and the Corporate Social Responsibility Committee of the Board.

On Infosys’ plans to bring employees back to office, as more and more people get vaccinated, the company said globally about 97 per cent employees are still working from home; the numbers vary across geographies.

Starting July, both in the US and India, Infosys had opened up its offices and employees were allowed to come in on a voluntary basis, with stringent protocols in place.

“We will probably now start looking at things in a much more formal manner. In October in India we are requesting all the senior leaders to come to office at least once a week.

“We are also requesting them to have several interventions for employees at least once a month so that we have a larger population coming to the office, and based on the feedback and outcome we will fine-tune the process and figure out what will happen in subsequent quarters,” Rao said.

India’s second-largest IT services company, Infosys has reported better-than-expected 12 per cent rise in its second-quarter net profit on more contracts from global businesses, a reason that also led to it raising its annual revenue outlook.

Net profit in July-September at Rs 5,421 crore, or Rs 12.88 a share, was 11.9 per cent higher than Rs 4,845 crore (or Rs 11.42 a share) net profit in the same period a year back.

Buoyed by robust deal pipeline as well as strong momentum of the past quarter, the company has raised its forecast for annual revenue growth to 16.5 per cent to 17.5 per cent in the fiscal year to March 2022, from 14 per cent to 16 per cent growth predicted in July.

Its consolidated revenue from operations rose by 20.5 per cent to Rs 29,602 crore.

The company further said it is expanding college graduates hiring programme to about 45,000 for the year, to harness the full potential of the market opportunity.

“Earlier, we had talked about hiring about 35000 campus graduates this year. Now, we have increased it to 45000,” Rao said.

Infosys and Wipro, both announced their second quarter results on Wednesday. Wipro posted a 17 per cent jump in consolidated net profit to Rs 2,930.6 crore for the quarter ended on September 30, 2021.

Consolidated revenue of Wipro increased by about 30 per cent to Rs 19,667.4 crore during the quarter compared to Rs 15,114.5 crore it registered in the corresponding quarter of 2020-21.

Last week, larger rival Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) reported a 14.1 per cent rise in consolidated net profit to Rs 9,624 crore in the September 2021 quarter, aided by broad-based growth across geographies and verticals.

Its revenue grew 16.7 per cent to Rs 46,867 crore for the September 2021 quarter from Rs 40,135 crore in the year-ago period.

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