Vishal Sikka says bringing back Nilekani an 'excellent idea', denies he is joining HP

Sikka said he offered to quit as executive vice-chairman because he felt it was in the best interests of all concerned so that Nilekani could have a free hand and it also meant that the succession process would be complete.

He said he had wanted to leave Infosys altogether after resigning as CEO last week, but the Board had insisted he stay on for the sake of continuity.

The technocrat, who is a huge proponent of artificial intelligence and has advocated making a positive difference in the world through technology, was at his candid best, and said he was excited about spending more time with his family.

When asked if he would be okay with the Board making the Panaya report public, Sikka said it was the Board's decision to make. “I would have gone along with what they decided,” he said.

The troubles between the founders, Board and Sikka, which eventually led to him stepping down as CEO last week, stemmed in large part from the alleged irregularities in Infosys’ acquisition of Israeli software firm Panaya Inc in 2015.

Anonymous whistleblowers had alleged that Sikka had requested improper deals with customers, the mergers and acquisitions team acted without securing proper approvals and that the CEO received inappropriate compensation and incurred excessive expenses relating to travel, security and the Palo Alto office.

Three investigations looked into the claims and found nothing but Murthy kept raising corporate governance issues at the company, and asked the Board to consider making the Panaya report public.

Sikka said the allegations made in the anonymous companies were “completely baseless, false, wrong”.

“It is a completely nonsensical detour,” he said of the Panaya investigation.

When asked about the alleged issues with the huge severance pay of former chief financial officer Rajiv Bansal, Sikka’s frustration was obvious. “Oh my God!” he exclaimed, and laughed that he had answered these questions a “thousand times”.

He steered clear making any comments about the lessons he learnt whole leading the company or what he thinks he could have done differently, saying it was too soon and he needed more time to reflect.

Sikka said he hoped the company can move forward and get back to its business.

When asked if his being based out of the US and not Bengaluru was a problem, and something he would change in retrospect, he said: “Business was outside India, it was a complex balance of spending time, mostly in airplanes as you know.”

Signing off, he said his was “an incredibly challenging job” but he is proud of the three years he spent at Infosys, and the thousands of emails and communications he has received from employees and clients had overwhelmed him.

Below is the verbatim transcript of the interview.

Q: This is a question that was put to Nandan Nilekani as well who now comes in as Chairman of Infosys. What transpired between last Friday and yesterday because last Friday, it was a very different board? Last Friday, the board came out strongly in support of you. Last Friday, the board said that the constant badgering by Mr Murthy had led to your resignation and today, it is a very different story. Could you explain to us what transpired that led to the change in position and stance of the Infosys board, also the resignation of the Chairman as well as the Co-Chairman, who of course, stays on?

A: I do not want to comment on what the board's decisions were, you have to ask them. From my point of view, last week what happened was widely covered and I resigned because I felt that I could not do my job anymore and all of that. I do not want to rehash that. So, I wanted to leave immediately with my 90 day notice and at the time, the board requested, actually the board insisted that I stay back and serve as Executive Vice-Chairman for the sake of continuity and succession and so forth. And I agreed and Pravin Rao became Interim CEO and Managing Director.

And then, over the course of the next several days, there was this movement to bring Nandan back in and I thought that was an excellent idea and Nandan of course, I have known him since my SAP days and when he was doing Aadhaar and we were building some Aadhaar based applications on top of Aadhaar. So he is an extraordinary leader and an iconic man and I helped in whatever way I could to see if he could agree. This was something that we all felt would be in everybody's interest.

And when Nandan agreed, it made sense for him to have a fully free reign on what he wants to do and so, I said that I do not want to continue anymore and it is the right thing to do, for me to leave immediately, so that he has the complete freedom in being able to do things the way he wants to. And of course, I am here, he can talk to me anytime and Pravin and others and so forth.

So that is basically what happened. So, I was Executive Vice-Chairman for a very short period of time.

Q: So just to understand this, you are saying that you decided it would be in the best interest of everyone involved for you to step away as Executive Vice-Chairman and you offered to resign?

A: Yes. R Seshsayee asked me and I told him that it does not, the succession with Nandan coming in, once Nandan comes in the succession point is done, so it is not right for me to hang around and be an overhang on his plans and whatever he wishes to do. So I offered to leave immediately.

Q: I do not want to dwell too much on who said what and what happened and there has been a lot of back and forth on several of those issues. But I would like to draw your attention to the press release that was issued by the board yesterday. In that press release, the now Former Chairman, Mr Seshasayee says Nandan's appointment will allow Infosys to focus on strategic changes it needs to make in order to capitalise on the opportunities ahead. In this statement, it seems to suggest that the Infosys board was not completely aligned to your strategic vision or they seem to have now developed some apprehensions with your strategic vision. I am trying to understand how this statement that Infosys will focus on strategic changes it needs to make in order to capitalise on the opportunities ahead. What do we make of this statement in light of the fact that you said the board fully supported your strategic vision, the board said it fully supported your strategic vision, so what are these strategic changes that Mr Seshasayee seems to be talked about?

A: I do not know. I think it is the board and the company were fully aligned to this strategic vision and so, I am not sure. You should ask Seshasayee and the others about that. I believe that the strategic direction for the company is very straightforward and everybody agrees on that. And Pravin has very actively worked and been an incredible partner over the last three years. The way when I came into it, it was the way, Mr Murthy in fact, was the Chairman at the time and the way it was set up was that Pravin would be in India and I would be here and everything would be – so basically other than Pravin and the CFO, everybody else was reporting also to Pravin. So that is how we ran the company for the last three years.

So Pravin has been a very active part of what we have done in executing the strategy, articulating the strategy. So I do not think that there will be any abrupt change to that and so forth. But obviously, with Nandan coming in, he will make lots of changes, so my sense is that Seshasayee is referring to Nandan having the freedom to do things the way he sees fit.

Q: You brought up Mr Murthy and I know in the past, in each of the conversations we have had and we have had several of them on this channel, you have stated that you joined Infosys because of NR Narayana Murthy, that it was your deep regard and respect for Mr Murthy that drew you back to India and drew you specifically to Infosys. In light of that and in light of the way things have panned out over the last several months, do you believe that perhaps you ought to have handled your relationship with Mr Murthy maybe differently? And specifically in the last few days and specifically on Friday, the comments that you made about the personal assaults and how you felt that the constant bickering forced you to tender in your resignation? Do you perhaps have any regret on the comments that you made specific to Mr Murthy?

A: No, I have not made any specific comments about Mr Murthy. I have referred to the general, the amount of noise that came into the system that we were having to deal with, that I was having to deal with, it became such a widespread multi-perspective noise that you could not tell who is saying what and who is behind what. It was a very vitiated atmosphere and I do not know who said these things. There were all these whispers and rumours and backroom stories and media being talked to by unknown people and all that.

I saw Mr Murthy a couple of months ago. He came to address some interns and he went and I saw him briefly. It was always wonderful to see him. So I do not know who was behind those things, but they became severe distractions and whoever it was spreading these stories and allegations and same thing over and over again and so forth. I have no idea and I have no interest in finding out who it was behind those stories and what their intentions were and so forth, except to say that the CEO of a company, USD 10.6-10.7 billion in revenue and global, diverse client base.

When I started there were four or five executive board members other than Pravin and later on, it was just me and Pravin. So, I was doing all of this work. So just a sheer amount of work that needs to be carried out to transform a large complex business. And on top of it, the headwinds that showed up over the last year or so, year and a half, with Brexit and visas and all of these things, which made the job that much more complex, but also that much more interesting and challenging and rewarding. All that is hard enough and then you wake up at five o'clock in the morning and then for the next three hours you are responding to questions about what happened over night. It just simply became an untenable thing.

But I do not know who were the people behind those. There were some people in public media obviously. So I do not want to dwell on all that. It was the right thing to do for the company and I am looking forward now. Actually today is day one. You know Jeff Bezos talked about day one and for me, today actually is day one.

Q: Since we are talking about day one and we are talking about the future, there are reports suggesting that you may already be considering the possibility of a move with HP. Is there any truth to those rumours?

A: No, it is not true. Meg Whitman is a very good friend of mine and a great mentor. She came to the Infosys event a few months ago and I have known here for a long time. They have built some machines for us when I was at SAP, some HANA specific machines and so I have had a deep relationship with them. Actually, I used to be an intern at HP when I was at Stanford. But I have not talked to her about any of this. These stories are completely false and somebody obviously is very keenly trying to put me into a box and trying to get me.

Q: Are you saying someone is trying to put you into 'CTO' box versus the 'CEO' box?

A: Someone is very keen to put me into a job, or some people, who knows? But no, this story is not true. I have been inundated with phone calls over the last few days and emails and so forth. I am talking to several friends of mine, but I have not decided anything. Unlike the last transition, when I got into this Infosys thing quite abruptly and in a tremendous hurry, I did not even get the chance to take some time off.

So, this time around I am keen to at least spend some time. I am going to take my kids to school shortly, right after we are done here and then, hopefully over the weekend. I can make some breakfast for Vandana and the kids which I have not really been able to do for a long time. I can make breakfast. I can make eggs, I can make poha, I can make several things.

Q: We hope that you enjoy yourself cooking up a storm, so to speak. But, if I may get back to some specific issues that were raised and I want to specifically talk about the Panaya acquisition because this in a sense has become the heart of the controversy. This has been at the heart of the bitter battle that is ensued between Mr Murthy and the other founders as well as the board of Infosys and now, some of those members, no longer on the board of Infosys. Do you believe that it was wrong not to have made the Panaya report public?

A: I do not know. This is the board's decision.

Q: Would you have supported the move to make the report public?

A: It was not my decision. I would have gone along with whatever the board decided. Our world is run by professional institutions and completely unrelated. So therefore, this Panaya, there were some completely baseless anonymous false allegations made and which are frankly very hurtful and over and over and over again, we kept hearing the same thing. And three different times this was investigated and on the third time, after this whistle-blower letter scam, it was investigated by a couple of incredibly capable, distinguished and completely unrelated law firms and forensic investigation people. And they gave a very categorical statement that there is nothing there.

It is like public companies' financials are reviewed by audit companies. They do not say that because you are paying the auditors to audit the results that we do not believe them and make the documents that they have worked on the workbooks and all these things public. This is not how it works. But having said that, there is nothing to hide. If somebody else wants to come in and investigate it for the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth time, by all means, go ahead. It is a completely unnecessary waste of time and I hope that with all this that has happened that the company can move forward and start to focus on its business and get away from all these things in the past.

Q: So you are saying that you would support the decision of even a fresh investigation, if the company were to take that route. Though at this point in time, Nandan has very categorically stated that he will get briefed on the current investigations and then taken appropriate decisions, but you are saying that if they were to do a fresh investigation, you would be fully supportive of that not that you have any part to play in that decision making process any more.

A: Whatever they want to do is totally fine. There was nothing wrong that was done and it is a completely nonsensical detour. So, if someone decides that it is in the right interest of people who investigate a fourth time or a fifth time or a sixth time, by all means, why not? But my sense is that it has already taken enough toll and my own sense is that we should move forward. But obviously whatever decision they want to make, it is fine.

Q: That is as far as Panaya is concerned. Some of the other decisions that have caused concern, that have been raised as concerns by the founders include the severance package to Rajiv Bansal and I know on several occasions you have said that it is a long story and too much time has been spent on it. But let me, for one last time, ask you this. If you could go back in time and do things differently on whether it is David Kennedy or Rajiv Bansal, do you believe that you could have done things differently and we perhaps, may not be in this position today?

A: I have answered these questions a thousand times, I do not want to answer it one more time. It is all from a long distant past. I has been years since these things have happened.

Q: I want to then move to the press release again that was issued by the Infosys board and it says that a separation agreement reflecting this which is your terms that have been arrived at and other terms such as a mutual release and a non-disparagement obligation has been approved by the board. Can you explain to me what is this non-disparagement obligation that has been approved between you and the board of Infosys?

A: I have no idea. I think these are standard agreements when senior executives leave. It generally means that you do not disparage each other and start calling each other names and things like that. I guess that is what it means and that is probably why lawyers do their thing and so forth. Mutual non-disparagement generally means that you will not say bad things about each other. So I think it is standard.

Q: You are saying that this is standard practice, nothing specific that was discussed with you before putting this down?

A: No, I do not even know what it says in the agreement around this. I think these are just standard things.

Q: You said that sometimes it is best to let go and for you, perhaps, the moment of deciding to move on from Infosys was when you felt that you perhaps could not really in that sense, add value any longer given everything else that surrounded you. As you start to now move forward, what are the lessons that you take away from this experience? What is it that you will internalise post this experience of three years?

A: First of all, I would listen more to your advisors and my mom was alive at the time when I started my job, she passed away three or four months into my Infosys journey. Actually yesterday I was thinking that I want to take some time and think about the lesson. So it is too early for me to even have thought through all the lessons that I have learned from the last three years. But I do want to reflect on the time and see what I can learn. Not enough time has gone by.

Steve Jobs always said that you can only connect the dots looking backwards and when we are doing things, in a context, when we are in the heat of the moment and being a CEO of a large complex company in challenging circumstances, you do think and you do think on instinct and so forth. I remember, when I started, I was writing a strategy paper in the early days, actually even before I started. And then I saw, when I became CEO on August 1, 2014 and I saw the situation at hand, I just decided to delay all that by a few months and simply start to engage with the people and with the teams and with the employees at large and so on.

So you adapt these things on the fly. Lessons are always learned looking backwards and connecting the dots looking backwards. So, over the next few weeks, I will reflect on these and perhaps, we can talk again if there is something interesting that I find. But yes, that is where I am.

Q: Do you believe that if you had been based here in India or at least if you had spent more time here in India, maybe things would not have come to this pass because a lot of the problems seem to have arisen because of the a communication breakdown, because of a communication deficit which then led to a trust deficit? In hindsight, do you believe that the decision to stay away from India and be based in Palo Alto did not work in anyone's interest?

A: I do not want to talk about things looking backwards anymore. It was an incredibly challenging job and the clients are all outside India and we forget that the business of the company is with the clients and meeting them, working with them, working with the teams that are there is how you understand what is going on. The innovation is happening here in Silicon Valley. So it was a complex balance of spending time mostly in airplanes, as you know. So whatever decisions we took at the time were all decisions in the right interest and I would not second guess them.

Q: Have you heard from employees, clients, investors in the last 24-48 hours?

A: It has been non-stop. It has been continuous. I have had literally thousands of emails and messages and so forth from employees. It has been overwhelming from customers, from investors, from partners, from everywhere. I am so far behind on responding to those and it has just been absolutely overwhelming. It is very moving. There is a constant, the sentiments that I have heard from employees and from clients and investors and so forth, you feel really good that you had so much impact. But I have not had time to absorb all this. I have in fact, responded to maybe 10 percent of the big emails and messages.

Q: You said you do not want to dwell on the past and I understand that, but since we are talking about moving forward, Nandan, during the course of the many investor calls and press conferences that he has done today has very categorically stated that he intends to build consensus and this is really in a sense the start of a process of repair, so to speak given what we have seen play out over the last few weeks, the last few months in fact. If I were to ask you about the process of reconciliation, re-establishing a connection that you enjoyed with Mr Murthy, is that something that you would hope for?

A: Why not? You never say never to these things, but I want to take some time and think through what I want to do next and then, you have to give everything you have got to whatever that new thing is that you are going to do. So, you do not want to make commitments like this about the future, but why not?

Q: Would you reach out to Mr Murthy?

A: Come on. First of all, what I am thinking about is I am late for taking my kids to school and second thing I am thinking about is the world around us is going through a very profound change and I want to do something about it in a big way and the advances in artificial intelligence (AI), the impact that these will have on jobs and the implications that it has on entrepreneurship and as we have talked about several times, these are all big things that will change the shape of the world in the future. This is what I am focusing on. This is what I am thinking about and I am looking forward to taking some peaceful time to think about these and see what I want to do next.

Q: So are we likely to see Vishal Sikka the entrepreneur emerge at the end of all of this? I know that you deeply believe in AI and automation, but are you likely to turn entrepreneur yourself?

A: For sure. I have been. My three years at Infosys were all about entrepreneurship and in fact, not only about doing entrepreneurial things, but creating a very pervasive culture of entrepreneurship across the company. So these things, I think go hand in hand, the enabling of automation to help us amplify ourselves and do things that we can articulate so that we can exercise our ability to be imaginative and to be entrepreneurial.

There is a digitisation of the world around us. The computing enabled transformation, the AI enabled transformation is massive, it is going to change every aspect of life. This cup that I am drinking my tea from, this is of course, a several hundred year old cup from Kyoto, but this cup will be a computer in the future and there is no doubt that it is going to be a connected computing service and it will know when the temperature of the tea is not right or the acidity is not right or how long I took to drink and so forth.

So everything around us is going to go through this massive change and frankly, the world is right now, in an asymmetric situation. It is unprepared for this change. Vandana, my wife, has often said that in the dark ages, we were in a situation where six percent of the world's population could read and write and right now, we are in a technology transformed world where less than one percent of the world knows how to programme a computer. And that has profound implications for our future, on education, on what happens to jobs.

Every month, a million graduates, three year or four year graduates, a million of them come into the unemployed roles in India, every month. So these are huge problems and huge opportunities. How do we create a culture of massive adoption of AI, massive training, education of people on these new technologies and what does that mean for a culture of making and entrepreneurship and so forth? What kinds of platforms exist to make something like this happen? This is what I am very passionate about and this is something that I want to do.

Q: Let me end by asking you, you put a strategy in place for Infosys, you believe firmly that it is an iconic company, that it has a resilience and it will continue to grow further from where you have left it. How confident do you feel about the future of Infosys given what you were able to contribute by way of its strategy?

A: It comes down to the power and the imagination of the Infosians and it is my big pride of the last three years is, in whatever little way that I could, helping to ignite that creative confidence. It is an amazing institution, it is an extraordinary institution. But it is the people, it is made of and made by the people and the people will carry it forward. And now, you have one of the most iconic leaders and the most iconic Infosian, Nandan running it. So I am not only confident, I feel a tremendous sense of pride in that. You three, three and a quarter years of your life completely and wholeheartedly to a mission like that.

And I hope that when we look back on this time that people will see that the change away from this global delivery model based on cost and labour arbitrage towards a model where the imagination, the entrepreneurial spirit, the ability to innovate out of every Infosian, that is the future, that this happened in my time and it was planted and it started to grow in my time and it became a mighty tree after that. So I am very proud of the three years and I am very proud of the company and I am very hopeful and with all my being, I wish it the very best and I wish Nandan the very best.

This idea of transforming our humanity, of transforming ourselves into entrepreneurs, into innovators, into people who can create the future – Alan Kay always says that the best way to predict the future is to invent it. So with the power of AI, with the power of education to transform ourselves and to be entrepreneurs, to exercise our imagination into shaping the future, this is an idea that of course, applies to Infosys but it goes far beyond that. It applies to the entire IT services industry. Indeed, it applies to our humanity and the world of the future has to be like this. It has to be a world where AI enables us to be more creative, more imaginative and AI may make us all that much more human and that much more powerful and this is what I am going to work on.