HR directing Indian IT?

The Indian IT industry is surely undergoing some changes – especially on the HR front. For majority of the IT companies operating out of India, USA is their biggest market. For the large cap companies, over 60% of their business comes from the States. Off late we have been seeing some slowdown of orders and the industry is working quickly to correct this, mainly from the HR front. IT is essentially a people-driven business and if that front is managed well, business will take care of itself.

The trend right now is to have a CEO who is based in USA, the place from where the company gets its maximum business. Wipro’s CEO-designate Abidali Neemuchwala us to be based in the US. Vishal Sikka, CEO of Infosys is based in USA and so is the CEO of Cognizant, Francisco D’Souza. Infact D’Souza was the first CEO to be based out of USA and that model worked.

The other trend we are seeing emerging is the presence of two top guys – CEO and COO or the Chief Operating Officer. Wipro announced Bhanumurthy BM as its COO while it is UB Pravin Rao for Infosys. Many in the industry say that CEO-COO model is what made a difference in the performance of Infosys over the past three quarters. The idea behind having a CEO and COO? The CEO will focus on strategies and client relationships while the COO will look after operational issues.

It looks as though many CEOs will follow suit and we could see more heading to be based either out of USA or Europe.