Day before Q1 results, Vishal Sikka's top man for AI puts in his papers

BENGALURU: Infosys veteran Samson David, who had been recently tasked by chief executive Vishal Sikka to spearhead the company’s flagship artificial intelligence platform Mana, has resigned from the company, according to two people aware of the developments.
David’s abrupt departure comes a day before Infosys announces its closely-watched first-quarter results, which will give investors crucial indicators on whether Infosys can top or match its industry-level growth rates from last year.

David’s exit marks at least the fifth high-level exit from Infosys over the past two years since Sikka took over the reins of the company. Other than David, other company veterans such as former CFO Rajiv Bansal, current L&T Infotech CEO Sanjay Jalona, former BPO head Gautam Thakkar and former EdgeVerve head Michael Reh have also left the company during this period.

An HPE spokeswoman confirmed the development. Infosys did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. David will join HPE as the head of its enterprise services delivery business and report to HPE’s global enterprise and outsourcing chief Mike Nefkens.

Other than Mana, David was also heading the company’s cloud, infrastructure and security unit, which currently generates well over $1 billion in annual revenue. He started his career as a service engineer at Voltas Ltd in 1990, before moving to Infosys in 1992 as a trainee software engineer.

Over the course of the next two decades, David rose quickly through the ranks and held multiple roles including delivery head of APAC and Canada and then a few years later proceeded to head the company’s media, entertainment and communications business in the Americas. This was followed by a stint as the global head of business platforms, before he was named chief operating officer of the company’s EdgeVerve business in July 2014.