Karnik to exit Nasscom

Raw treatment meted out to Indian information technology sector by Union Finance minister P Chidambaram in his Annual Budget 2007 seems to have taken a toll upon the main lobbying body for Indian software, Nasscom with its president Kiran Karnik bowing out of office.

The decision, formally announced by Nasscom on Thursday, confirmed what was being talked about in hushed tones by the industry captains for the past few weeks.

In a terse statement, Nasscom said it had appointed search firm Korn Ferry to look for Karnik’s successor in consultation with him and key organisation members. This, it said, was part of the mission to “institutionalize” Nasscom through appropriate structures, systems and processes “for which well-defined HR policies had been laid down”.

Nasscom statement went on to suggest that Karnik’s bowing out of Nasscom was due to these norms which cap the working age of the president at 60 years.

Since Karnik turned 60 on March 16 this year, he was slated to retire anyways, claimed a Nasscom spokesperson. However, the fact that Nasscom had never earlier talked about these norms, nor the about the impending exit of Karnik, indicates that the decision wasn’t a planned one. It was formalised at Nasscom’s annual meeting that took place a couple of days ago in Hyderabad.

There has been a lot of discontentment among a cross-section of member companies over Nasscom’s sudden going out of favour vis-à-vis the political dispensation, as also its inability to influence the government to continue with a preferential taxation regime.

A highly capable and distinguished personality in his own right, Karnik was an ISRO veteran for over two decades and later worked as head of Discovery channel in India before taking over at Nasscom. He joined a rudderless Nasscom five years ago after the sudden death of its mentor and first president Dewang Mehta in 2001. Interestingly, the mandate for his search too had been handled by Korn Ferry.