Infosys appoints long-time employee as head for startup fund

The software services major, Infosys has finally appointed a new leader for its $500-million startup fund, nearly 10 months after the resign of Yusuf Bashir who served as the managing director of Infosys Innovation Fund.

As per the reports, Infosys has appointed its long-time employee Deepak Padaki to head the Infosys Innovation Fund.

Padaki, who had started as a software engineer with the IT major in 1992, is currently executive vice-president of strategy, M&A, and the chief risk officer at Infosys, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Infosys Innovation Fund remains a key part of the company’s strategy, but will focus more on investments that can help digital businesses, an Infosys executive said.

Trouble at the fund surfaced after Bashir, who had led the fund for a little over two years, quit last July. His resignation came barely a few days after Ritika Suri stepped down as the IT giant’s executive vice-president. Both Bashir and Suri were former Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka’s colleagues at German business software maker SAP SE and were considered close to him.

Sikka himself had resigned in August 2017 amid reports of a tussle with Infosys founders and the company board.

In March, Pankaj Mitra, one of the founding team members of the fund, had also resigned to join networking technology giant Cisco Systems, Inc.