N Shivapriya, ET Bureau | 19 Aug, 2013, 06.49AM IST
BANGALORE: Former Wipro co-CEO Girish Paranjpe has emerged the frontrunner to lead technology services company iGate, which has been searching for a CEO after it fired Phaneesh Murthy in mid-May.
Paranjpe and one other backup candidate have emerged as the final contenders for the position in a search being undertaken by headhunter Russell Reynolds Associates. Several high-profile candidates, including former Patni CEO Jeya Kumar, and Infosys director Ashok Vemuri, have apparently dropped out. But Salil Parekh, who is currently heading Capgemini's application services and financial services business unit, could still be in the reckoning.
"Paranjpe is the favourite and will most likely take up the offer. But he is yet to accept it," said a person aware of the development.
The person aware of the development saidiGate is looking to close the search process soon.
After Paranjpe left Wipro in 2011, he worked as the managing director of international operations for US-based fuel-cell maker Bloom Energy. Before he became the joint-CEO of Wipro along with Suresh Vaswani, he was heading the finance solutions practice, which grew from about $50 million (Rs 310 crore) to $1 billion (Rs 6,200 crore) under his watch.
iGate said recently that it hopes to have a new CEO by fall, which is end-August or early-September. The company did not reply to an email seeking comments for this report.
Paranjpe said he "did not want to comment on rumour". Shares of the New Jersey-based company, which has most of its 30,000 employees based in India, have been rising steadily even after Murthy's exit. After sinking to $14 when Murthy was sacked for not disclosing a sexual relationship with an employee, the Nasdaq-listed stock has risen to $22 apiece. Unlike earlier, when most CEOs were from engineering or technical backgrounds, increasingly IT companies are looking for candidates with varied profiles as the nature of outsourcing market is changing.
"The premium is for leadership, which can work on demand generation and not so much supply management," said R Suresh, managing director, RGF India, part of Recruit Company, Japan's largest executive search and human resources consulting company. "A significant part of the leadership team in the big five IT firms has grown from the technical and supply sides and these are invariably overlooked by hiring companies."
Paranjpe is a chartered and cost accountant.
The new iGate CEO will have the challenges of retaining and growing business from the second-largest client Royal Bank of Canada, which contributes 12% of revenues. After allegations of flouting of Canadian visa rules, there were fears that iGate may be replaced as the service provider. Further, tying up the loose ends from iGate's leveraged buyout in 2011 of Patni Computer Systemsa firm three times its revenues then, will also be a key priority.
Founded by Sunil Wadhwani and Ashok Trivedi, iGate had a little over $1 billion in sales in 2012 and is backed by private equity fund Apax Partners. The company is aiming for $3 billion in sales in 2017.
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