Top-deck exits continue at Wipro as two more executives leave company

Haque and Saxena’s exits mark at least 14 top-deck exits at Wipro in less than a year, even as the company undertakes promotions regularly to bump people to vice president and senior vice president.

The slew of top-deck exits at IT major Wipro continues, with two senior vice-presidents being the latest to exit the company, with the latest being the heads of Wipro’s healthcare and manufacturing verticals.

Mohd Haque, a senior vice-president who was also the head of the Healthcare and Medical Devices division at Wipro, will be leaving the company in June. Haque, who had been with the company for nearly 13 years, was also Wipro’s inclusion and diversity lead for Americas.

Along with Haque, SVP and head of the manufacturing and hi-tech business unit Ashish Saxena is also exiting the company after nearly six years. This was first reported by the Times of India.

This comes on the heels of Vice President Gurvinder Sahni leaving the company to become the Chief Marketing Officer at Persistent Systems.

In a statement to Moneycontrol, Wipro confirmed the exits. “Wipro can confirm that Mohd Haque will be leaving the company in June. Ashish Saxena and Gurvinder Sahni have left Wipro to pursue other opportunities. We thank them for their years of leadership and contribution,” a Wipro spokesperson said.

Haque and Saxena’s exits mark at least 14 top-deck exits at Wipro in less than a year, even as the company undertakes promotions regularly to bump people to vice president and senior vice president. Brazil country head Douglas Silva, Japan country head Tomoaki Takeuchi, Australia and New Zealand MD Sarah Adam-Gedge, Middle East MD Mohammed Areff, as well as Wipro Americas 2 CEO Angan Guha all exited the company late last year. Guha went on to become the CEO of Birlasoft.

In 2023, the company has so far seen the exits of Chief Operations Officer Sanjeev Singh, Americas 2 CFO Nithin V Jaganmohan, India head Satya Easwaran, iDEAS business head Rajan Kohli, and Americas 1 CFO Kamini Shah, along with Sahni, Haque, and Saxena.

Singh went on to become the CEO of CMS Infosystems, Jaganmohan the CFO of Xoriant, Kohli the CEO of CitiusTech, and Shah the CFO of Birlasoft.

Promotions

Earlier this year, the company promoted 61 people to the position of vice-presidents and 12 to senior vice presidents, which took the total number of VPs and SVPs to 275 — the most promotions the company had ever made.

In an interview to Moneycontrol after the company’s earnings last year, Chief HR Officer Saurabh Govil maintained that the company’s top-level attrition is in single digits and not something that the company is worried about.

“We have also onboarded a lot of new leadership talent into the organisation with critical expertise. It's a good mix right now.  We have about 275-odd people of the rank of VP and above. In January, we promoted 60 people to VP internally,” he had said.