While IT giant Infosys has of late made headlines for various reasons right from the reported layoffs to a clean chit in Panaya deal, another issue that seems to be dogging the firm is its inability to retain its senior level employees. After executive vice president Ritika Suri quit a week back, Yusuf Bashir, MD of the $500-million Infosys Innovation Fund has resigned from his post.
Based in Palo Alto, California, Bashir was in-charge of the firm's digital projects and was responsible for identifying and investing in smaller companies working on digital services such as Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, cloud and analytics, reported the Times of India. During his tenure with Infosys, Bashir made investments in 12 start-ups, the last one being in December 2016.
He was handpicked by Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka and joined the firm in March 2015. Bashir had previously worked with Sikka in German business software maker SAP SE as vice president of new products. Before SAP, Bashir worked with IBM and was the vice president of new products and business development.
Before Bashir joined the brand, Suri was overseeing the startup fund on a temporary basis. Suri later was put in charge of mergers and acquisitions but she too resigned from her post last week.
She also led the acquisition of Israeli technology firm Panaya for Infosys. The deal had raised quite a few eyebrows when the Securities Exchange Board of India (Sebi) received two anonymous complaints alleging that Sikka had made personal gains during the acquisition of Panaya and also said that the company CEO had used company resources for personal purposes.
While he was given a clean chit later, Sikka seems to be having a tough time retaining talent. Since he took over in August 2014, numerous biggies have left the firm. Before Suri and Bashir, Sandeep Dadlani, president and head - MRCL, quit the company to pursue other interests. Before that, Infosys lost senior executive such as Rajiv Bansal, Samson David, Manish Tandon and Anup Upadhyay to name a few.
