Wipro's US, Europe business head quits

The appointment of Suresh Vaswani and Girish Paranjpe as twin-CEOs was only the beginning of a corporate restructuring in Wipro. Insiders say it was only the "tip of ice-berg". "A series of changes are slated to take place internally. It will include significant geographical, vertical and people realignment and repositioning exercises," said a source. Although a corporate restructuring was supposed to have happened only next year, the sudden exit announcement of P R Chandrasekar, president (Americas & Europe) in Wipro, became a trigger for advancing the exercise. Chandrasekar was responsible for geographies that bring in almost 75% of Wipro's business. Sources say Wipro may split the geographies and may bring in two people to handle what Chandrasekar was handling. "Chandrasekar was one of Premji's blue-eyed boys and he tried to retain him. But Chandrasekar was keen to quit. We have already found a person to replace him in the US," a Wipro official said, declining to name the person. Chandrasekar joined Wipro in 2000 — he was previously director of business development in GE India. He is said to have played a crucial role in expanding Wipro's market position as a system integrator, BPO and consulting provider. He is said to have been instrumental in the multiple acquisitions that Wipro undertook in the past few years, including NerveWire, AMS and Ericsson's R&D. Wipro's BPO head T K Kurian is expected to move to a larger responsibility. “Premji has decided to induct him into a bigger, larger role in the main IT business of the company. He will be given charge of special initiatives and projects involving key customers and larger deals, mostly reporting directly to Premji. That means he will get out of the BPO portfolio," said sources in Wipro. Kurien joined the company in 2000 and has brought a lot of visibility for the company's BPO after taking charge of the business in 2005. Ramesh Emani, who was president of Wipro's product engineering solutions division, quit Wipro a quarter ago, while Rajesh Ramaiah, Wipro's investor relationship officer and head corporate treasury, left early this month.