There is a leadership vacuum in Infosys, time to get Nandan Nilekani back: Mohandas Pai

ET Now: There are two ways of looking at it the top level exits in Infosys. On the one hand, a lot of people say that there was a team that was probably not performing well and now they are exiting and that will probably be a positive for the stock over the long run. The sceptics, on the other hand, would argue that there are a lot of people who have been manning the company for the last many years and it is not a pint-sized company, but a Rs 1 lakh 70 thousand crore behemoth. Why have there been so many high profile exits in the company?

Mohandas Pai: There is a leadership vacuum in the company, because they made the wrong choice of CEO three years ago and that is playing out right now. The company has not performed and in June 2011, they had appointed three members on the board and all three of them have gone now and all three have been extraordinary individuals.

Ashok Vemuri is now the CEO of another company, V Balakrishnan had left and has started his own fund and BG Srinivas, I am told, would now be joining some other company as CEO.

So obviously, all three have been CEO materials. It is obvious that the chemistry did not work, or they were not fully empowered. There is a need for the board to sit down and work out a good succession plan and put a new team in place because the entire layer of people below the executive board are now gone and many of them were outstanding performers.

Yes, a few of them possibly were not pulling the weight, but it is not possible that all of them were not doing so. They were extraordinary people and they are performing at other places.