Hello Folks,
To continue, from where I had left in my previous article, Mr. Murthy had become the uncrowned king in the Company he worked for and in the real sense was responsible also, for its stupendous growth from a small startup in the early 1990's to a mammoth IT Giant in a span of 10 years.
In that decade he had a ride without any bumps and only on the uphill. But then, in June 2002, the American Journey came to a sudden full stop. Mr. Murthy was accused of sexual harassment of his executive assistant, and was dragged into courts. He would stand accused of suppressing facts, misrepresenting them to the board and, as a former colleague points out, "guilty of a serious error in judgement". Rather than choosing to fight, he agreed to a $3 million payout to the person accusing him. Phaneesh denied being a party to the settlement, but the company says the exact opposite. With Karmic wheel in complete spin, the price was dear - loss of job and definitely reputation.
Cast down from nine circles of heaven into purgatory, he wandered looking for a fresh start. He f ound temporary relief in Quintant, a consulting outfit. He raised $30 million ($15 million was actually invested) before his funding agency, the Rs. 2,500 crore GMR Group, a successful investor in ING Vysya with large interests in power, decided to pull the plug. GMR said it wanted to invest in its power business. But there was talk of Phaneesh being unable to get revenues and business, and his investors getting impatient. Without the redoubtable army of developers, Phaneesh was forced to abandon the fresh start and allow himself to be courted as CEO of a software company iGate. Life slowly slipped back into the familiar. The future started looking more like a linear extrapolation of the past, Phaneesh woke up from a new dream into an old reality. But what matters is that it is real.
He was ready to float once more.
When you listen to his interviews it feels, he works like a modem. Like modem screeches, whines and wails as it tries to match its thoughts with the modem at the far end of the line, Phaneesh keeps rummaging, shuffling and hunting through analogies, metaphors and incidents to help prove his point. It is the glimpse into the mind of a man who is claimed to have scaled up the IT Giant's sales from $2 million to $700 million. He did it all over again.
He is travelling to various offices of iGate across the globe and confesses it to be tough and gruelling, the man who never had to try too hard to make things happen. He cheekily says "Sometimes I wonder if it was all a fluke. I really want to test myself again." referring to his innings at the IT Giant. The innings unfortunately ended in way that was never ever imagined or anticipated.
Today, iGate being much smaller company, went ahead and acquired Patni Computers, a much larger company in size and also very old and reputed company to bring him back in the Billion Dollar Club. He again reached a position where he belonged all his life, but which was not given to him as a gift just because he was worthy of it and deserved it. He had to prove his worth again to get it even though his Talent and Work was already witnessed once and was a blue chip running script for inventors across the globe.
Phaneesh Murthy will not go down in the history books with the accolades he actually deserves to achieve a no mean feat, because of lack of consistency and the scandal, but for people who actually read about him will surely not disagree that he was a Phoenix in real sense.
Hope to have offered something new and very viable to understand through the two part story of Resurgence. Please offer opinions and views to have a constructive dialogue.
Till the next work
Cheers !!
KS :)
To continue, from where I had left in my previous article, Mr. Murthy had become the uncrowned king in the Company he worked for and in the real sense was responsible also, for its stupendous growth from a small startup in the early 1990's to a mammoth IT Giant in a span of 10 years.
In that decade he had a ride without any bumps and only on the uphill. But then, in June 2002, the American Journey came to a sudden full stop. Mr. Murthy was accused of sexual harassment of his executive assistant, and was dragged into courts. He would stand accused of suppressing facts, misrepresenting them to the board and, as a former colleague points out, "guilty of a serious error in judgement". Rather than choosing to fight, he agreed to a $3 million payout to the person accusing him. Phaneesh denied being a party to the settlement, but the company says the exact opposite. With Karmic wheel in complete spin, the price was dear - loss of job and definitely reputation.
Cast down from nine circles of heaven into purgatory, he wandered looking for a fresh start. He f ound temporary relief in Quintant, a consulting outfit. He raised $30 million ($15 million was actually invested) before his funding agency, the Rs. 2,500 crore GMR Group, a successful investor in ING Vysya with large interests in power, decided to pull the plug. GMR said it wanted to invest in its power business. But there was talk of Phaneesh being unable to get revenues and business, and his investors getting impatient. Without the redoubtable army of developers, Phaneesh was forced to abandon the fresh start and allow himself to be courted as CEO of a software company iGate. Life slowly slipped back into the familiar. The future started looking more like a linear extrapolation of the past, Phaneesh woke up from a new dream into an old reality. But what matters is that it is real.
He was ready to float once more.
When you listen to his interviews it feels, he works like a modem. Like modem screeches, whines and wails as it tries to match its thoughts with the modem at the far end of the line, Phaneesh keeps rummaging, shuffling and hunting through analogies, metaphors and incidents to help prove his point. It is the glimpse into the mind of a man who is claimed to have scaled up the IT Giant's sales from $2 million to $700 million. He did it all over again.
He is travelling to various offices of iGate across the globe and confesses it to be tough and gruelling, the man who never had to try too hard to make things happen. He cheekily says "Sometimes I wonder if it was all a fluke. I really want to test myself again." referring to his innings at the IT Giant. The innings unfortunately ended in way that was never ever imagined or anticipated.
Today, iGate being much smaller company, went ahead and acquired Patni Computers, a much larger company in size and also very old and reputed company to bring him back in the Billion Dollar Club. He again reached a position where he belonged all his life, but which was not given to him as a gift just because he was worthy of it and deserved it. He had to prove his worth again to get it even though his Talent and Work was already witnessed once and was a blue chip running script for inventors across the globe.
Phaneesh Murthy will not go down in the history books with the accolades he actually deserves to achieve a no mean feat, because of lack of consistency and the scandal, but for people who actually read about him will surely not disagree that he was a Phoenix in real sense.
Hope to have offered something new and very viable to understand through the two part story of Resurgence. Please offer opinions and views to have a constructive dialogue.
Till the next work
Cheers !!
KS :)
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