Debashish Chatterjee, who quit as the executive and vice president, global delivery of Cognizant in May, will join as a chief executive officer in Mindtree from August 1, CNBC TV18 reported quoting sources. Chatterjee will remain with Cognizant till July. He served the company for 23 years. The management of Larsen & Toubro had said they would announce the new CEO of Mindtree on August 1. Rostow Ravanan had resigned as CEO of Mindtree after L&T bought 60 per cent stake in the company. Post Mindtree’s merger with L&T, the company’s other promoters – executive chairman Krishnakumar Natarajan and chief operating officer NS Parthasarthy, also resigned from the board and as employees. However, they remain shareholders of the company.
Besides Chatterjee, the other contenders for the CEO post at Mindtree included Cognizant executive Rajeev Mehta and former Mindtree CEO Anjan Lahiri, according to reports. Chatterjee announced via a Linkedin post on Thursday that he would be leaving Cognizant on July 31 after two decades. However, he didn’t mention about his role at Mindtree. VG Siddhartha, the founder of the popular chain Cafe Coffee Day, whose body was lately recovered from Nethravathi river in Mangaluru, had sold off his entire stake of 20.4 per cent stake in Mindtree to L&T in a bid to reduce debt in Coffee Day Enterprises.
Mindtree is a mid-sized IT services company, founded in 1999, which is co-headquartered in India and the US. It was promoted by 10 industry professionals who came from Cambridge Technology Partners, Lucent Technologies and Wipro. The company focuses on software development and offers different IT Services to capital markets, insurance, manufacturing, retail and travel & transportation industries.
Today, on BSE, the shares of Mindtree had opened marginally higher at Rs 714 per share. At 9:50 AM, its shares were seen trading at Rs 707 per share, down 5.15 points from the previous close. At the same time, L&T shares were trading at Rs 1,381.70 per share, up 5.25 points from the last settlement.