After elevating COO Abidali Z Neemuchwala as CEO earlier this week, Wipro has made a long-time top company executive Bhanumurthy BM as chief operating officer. Another company veteran GK Prasanna has been made president of a newly created unit - marketing, innovations and technology. Both these appointments will be effective from February 1.
Neemuchwala’s appointment as CEO and the incumbent TK Kurien’s appointment as executive vice chairman too will come to effect from February 1.
Both Bhanumurthy and Prasanna will continue to report to Neemuchwala. Bhanumurthy has been leading Wipro’s business application services unit as president and chief executive. A 25-year veteran at Wipro, he had headed various business units such as retail, consumer goods, transportation and government.
“In his role, Bhanu will provide leadership to all the service lines including business application services, global infrastructure services, product engineering services, analytics, application management services and business process services, service transformation and excellence, global delivery enablement, and quality functions,†said a company statement.
The current head of global infrastructure services GK Prasanna has moved to the new role. A 33-year-long Wipro veteran Prasanna will lead marketing, innovation and technology (MIT) wing.
MIT will comprise CTO and CIO offices, marketing, strategic engagements (advisor relations & sales enablement function), and integrated solutions group. “This new team will focus on non-linear growth engines, products and platform-based services, integrated solutions, research, and new technologies,†said the statement.
Prior to these appointments, Wipro had last year elevated Anand Padmanabhan and Shaji Farooq as presidents. Padmanabhan who heads, energy, natural resource and utilities vertical, too is a long timer of over 28 years at Wipro. Farooq heads banking, financial services and insurance vertical.
Weeks ahead of these top level changes, two vertical heads exited Wipro. Sangita Singh, chief executive of Wipro’s fast growing healthcare and life sciences vertical quit in December and Ayan Mukerji, chief executive of media, telecom and product engineering services, left the firm in November.