There was a time at Infosys Technologies when all that Phaneesh Murthy touched, turned to gold. As the head of its sales & marketing division, Infosys chairman NR Narayana Murthy, relied heavily on him. Phaneesh was the man everyone looked up to, when a sale was getting difficult to seal. Infoscians knew he would have a solution to the most critical of problems.
In fact, his stock rose so fast at Infosys that he had lots of admirers in the campus, cutting across teams. Infosys employees wanted to work with him, to learn the ropes of international selling. People like Jessie Paul, who later too rose to the top of the marketing teams of Wipro and Infosys, holds Phaneesh in very high regard and in a recent interview with FE attributed much of her early learning to being associated with Phaneesh.
Even today, people at Infosys talk about how he built up the company’s operations in the United States, and how Infosys became a big brand in North America in a short span of time, thanks to Phaneesh’s unflagging efforts.
Then came a big blip in his career when a sexual harassment case was filed against him by a female colleague. This was at a time when he was touted to become one of the top rung leaders at Infosys. Some even had predicted that he could become its CEO one day.
In 2002, Phaneesh Murthy resigned from Infosys. Phaneesh, cited as the reason for his resignation, the need for personal time to pursue a successful defense of the lawsuit filed by in the United States against him and the company, alleging wrongful termination and sexual harassment.
At that time, Phaneesh Murthy was one of the highest paid Infosys employees with an annual take-home salary of $400,000. Narayana Murthy had this to say on the incident: ?Phaneesh has been an integral part of Infosys’ growth in the last 10 years. He has performed outstandingly in sales and marketing, and we are sorry that he has tendered his resignation in these circumstances.?
In 2003, Infosys entered into a $3 million out-of- court settlement with its former employee who had filed the suit.
After moving out of Infosys, Phaneesh founded Quintant Services. Shortly after, software services firm iGATE Global Solutions (earlier known as Mascot Systems) acquired a 51% stake in Quintant for Rs 86.9 crore. Phaneesh Murthy, joined iGate as its new chief executive officer (CEO).
“It?s nice to be back,?? said Phaneesh, when he returned to the top with iGate. And now the wheel has turned a full circle with iGate acquiring 63% stake in Patni Computer Systems, one of India’s oldest IT firms, for $921 million. Looks like Phaneesh Murthy is truly back in the reckoning. His new billion dollar baby awaits him in the cradle.