India's second largest IT company Infosys Technologies is set to announce its leadership succession plan on Saturday, including the successor to the current chairman, the iconic N. R. Narayana Murthy. The Infosys board meets tomorrow. . If one of the founders is made the chairman, then other top posts too will see changes. Though several names including of outsiders are doing the rounds, Infosys Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Mr Kris Gopalakrishnan, in an earlier interview to Business Line, had said that “there is enough talent inside”.

Many of the industry leaders that this newspaper spoke to said that although there is hardly anyone who can truly replace Mr Murthy, the new leader's major task would be to make Infosys a global multinational which could rank alongside companies like IBM. One of Infosys' co-founders, Mr N.S. Raghavan, who resigned from Infosys several years ago, said, “The new chairman has to see how Infosys can become truly global. Today, there is still a lot of Indianness in the company.”

Mr Rajinder Gandotra, one of the top 250 leaders in Infosys who left the company to set up another IT company, Avekshaa Technologies, said what Infosys needs today are attributes that go beyond charisma, which was one of the requirements for the founding team.

“Charisma is anytime an advantage. But is it a show-stopper today? I don't think so,” he said and pointed out that Infosys would have needed a charismatic leader in its initial phase because nobody knew of its existence.

Co-founder of MindTree and now the chairman of another IT company, Mr Ashok Soota, said that rather than concentrating on charisma, Infosys had to try and get the best possible leader. “When you deliver, you get charisma,” he said.

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