Mohandas Pai quits Infosys board, company to meet on Apr 30 for succession plan

Even as IT bellwether Infosys Technologies is scouting for its next set of leaders, its Human Resource (HR) Director Mohan Das Pai has stepped down from the board.

"T V Mohandas Pai, has decided to relinquish the position of member of the board and has requested the board to relieve him of the responsibilities after the company's annual general meeting on June 11, 2011," Infosys said in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange.

The board of directors of the company will meet on April 30, 2011 to finalise the company's leadership succession plans.

"The Board of Directors will meet on April 30, 2011 to finalise plans for the company's leadership succession, post NR Narayana Murthy's retirement as Chairman of the Board in August 2011," the filing added.

Earlier, reports had suggested that Infosys COO SD Shibulal was likely to take over as the CEO as the current Chief Kris Gopalakrishnan was likely to become the Chairman after Murthy's retirement. There were also speculations about Pai becoming the COO.

"Mohan has been an early adopter and a keen anchor builder of Infosys. It is difficult to imagine Infosys without Mohan's passion, commitment, joie-de-vivre and intellect," Infosys Chairman and Chief Mentor N R Narayana Murthy said.

Infosys has also formed a nominations committee, comprising Professor Jeffery S Lehman, Deepak M Satwalekar (former MD and CEO of HDFC Standard Life Insurance) and KV Kamath (non-executive Chairman of the Board of Directors of ICICI Bank). The committee is responsible for succession planning for the roles of chairman, CEO, COO and CFO of the company.

Without divulging Pai's future plans, the company said, "He has much bigger projects in the horizon - nation building".