EdgeVerve head Anirban Dey quits; Infosys in need of a retention plan stat!

While IT firms are busy refuting rumours of mass layoffs, it looks like industry giant Infosys has bigger fish to fry. The IT giant has been dogged by one resignation after another and it's time the company comes up with a solid retention plan to keep its talents in the company.

After Ritika Suri and Yusuf Bashir, the latest resignation comes from Anirban Dey, the global head and chief business officer of Edge products at EdgeVerve, Infosys Ltd's products and platforms unit. Dey put down his papers last week and is currently serving notice period, sources told LiveMint.

Another SAP executive hand picked by CEO Vishal Sikka, Dey joined Infosys in March 2015 and was in-charge of sales, marketing, services and operations of EdgeVerve products. Dey was previously the managing director of SAP Labs India, SAP India's research and development wing.

 EdgeVerve performed well under Dey and brought in 5.4 percent of Infosys' revenue for the June 2017 quarter.  While Dey had in 2015 said that joining Infosys was "an honor," he did not respond to the business websites email seeking his comment on the resignation.

Meanwhile, these are some seriously tough times for Infosys with senior-level talents leaving one after the other, especially at a time when the IT sector is already witnessing a slowdown. About 10 senior level managers have left the firm since March 2016.

Executive vice president Ritika Suri quit a week back. She was in charge of mergers and acquisitions 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.

Immediately after Suri's exit, Yusuf Bashir, MD of the $500-million Infosys Innovation Fund has resigned from his post. 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 startups, the last one being in December 2016.

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.

Amid the resignations, the focus now falls on Sikka's longevity and much has also been said how Sikka himself might leave after losing such high profile talents. However, Infosys Co-Chairman Ravi Venkatesan hopes that Sikka achieves the targets for the firms and stays on.

When asked if he saw Sikka continuing with the firm and delivering results or leaving, Venkatesan told Press Trust of India: "Well I very much hope that it is the former (that Sikka will turn things around), not the latter (that he will turn his back on Infosys due to losing high-profile talents)."

The co-chairman also spoke about the recent exits and explained that the senior executive were very talented people and much in demand in the market. While it is not unusual for people to move on, Venkatesan said that the firm needed to ensure that such talents do not leave and the best way to do that was to see that they grew professionally as well as personally at the organisation.

"But when the industry is changing so fast, boss, if people have an opportunity to become a CEO somewhere else and become number 2 somewhere else, we cannot stop them," he added.