At least five of its peers earning less than $5 billion in annual revenue announced a dozen such leadership changes in total—ranking vertical heads and above—in less than 45 days. Analysts attribute these changes at mid-tier IT firms to their ambition to grow their business, with many of them luring top talent from their larger peers with proven skills and experience in scaling complex businesses.
These new appointments and exits at the nation’s mid-cap software services companies signal that they are looking to turbocharge growth at a time when generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and macro uncertainties are prompting their clients to carefully reassess their spending plans. This is because maintaining IT budgets gets tough when primary business itself is getting hampered due to tariff-related turmoil.
Sample this.
Dhok, earlier the senior vice-president and general manager for banks and financial institutions at Persistent, replaced Dhanashree Bhat, who resigned for personal reasons. He assumes the new role from 12 August. Bhat joined Persistent from Tech Mahindra Ltd in December 2023.
On 7 August, Persistent “announced strategic leadership changes to scale its growth momentum and enhance its operational excellence.”
“This change reflects the strength of the company’s existing leadership, succession planning, long-term transformation priorities, and continued focus on seamless execution,” said Persistent Systems in a press release on 7 August.
As part of the rejig, Vinit Teredesai, who is the company’s chief financial officer (CFO), is expected to take on the additional mantle of IT and ESG (environmental, social and governance), according to the company’s press release.
Dhok’s elevation follows the retirement of Yogesh Patgaonkar as the company’s chief people officer on 23 July. He was replaced by Rajiv Naithani, who was previously the senior vice president of the company for six months. Naithani assumed his role from the start of the month.
However, Pune-based Persistent was not the only mid-sized IT outsourcer to reshuffle its top ranks in the last 45 days—five other peers have made similar changes.
Gururaj Deshpande joined as chief delivery officer of larger peer LTIMindtree Ltd on 4 August. He is expected to handle the company’s delivery centres and talent functions, and will report directly to chief executive officer (CEO) Venu Lambu, according to a company release.
On 1 August, Coforge Ltd announced the exit of Gautam Samanta, president and executive director of the country’s seventh-largest IT outsourcer, as he wished to pursue other opportunities.
A day earlier, changes ensued at Hexaware Technologies Ltd, which made a comeback to the Indian stock exchanges this February. The Mumbai-headquartered IT service provider appointed Shantanu Baruah as president and global head of its healthcare and insurance vertical on 31 July. The former HCL executive vice-president replaced Milan Bhatt, who resigned in May.
“There is a lot of talent demand for mid-caps. This is where the growth is anticipated and boards are seeking talent from experienced large-cap players to drive growth, avoid the bureaucracy of a large-cap, and make more money in the process,” said R. Wang, founder of Constellation Research.
Hexaware also reposed its faith in company veteran Kush Gupta, who was promoted as vertical head of Hexaware’s hi-tech professional services on 6 July. While Baruah joins from the country’s third-largest IT company HCL Technologies Ltd, Gupta has plied his trade in Hexaware for 24 years.
Both were designated as senior managerial personnel of the company and both changes were done to strengthen domain leadership and scale vertical growth, according to the company’s press releases.
At L&T Technology Services Ltd (LTTS), M.T. Lakshmanan ceased to be the chief human resources officer (CHRO) as he was transferred back to Larsen & Toubro Ltd, the parent company which deputed him to LTTS. According to the company’s 16 July press release, T. Shivram is the new CHRO of LTTS. He also came from the L&T Group.
Kamini Shah resigned as Birlasoft CFO on 23 July citing personal reasons, and was replaced by Chandrasekar Thyagarajan, who joined from Greaves Electric Mobility for a second stint as CFO.
There were elevations even in the non-client facing roles, as Shimona Chadha was named Persistent Systems’ chief marketing officer on 3 July, whereas Sairam Vedam took up that role for Coforge last month.
LTIMindtree, Coforge, Persistent Systems, Hexaware, LTTS and Birlasoft ended the April-June 2025 period with $1.15 billion, $442 million, $389.7 million, $382.1 million, $335.3 million and $150.7 million, respectively.
Mid-caps have outpaced the country’s five largest tech service providers—Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Infosys Ltd, HCLTech, Wipro Ltd and Tech Mahindra—for two consecutive years, growing in double digits last year compared with 1-5% revenue growth at large-caps. Notably, Wipro and Tech Mahindra have reported a revenue decline in the last two years.
In relation to large-caps, churn at the CXO and vertical head level has been more pronounced for the smaller peers.
The last company to report this churn was Tech Mahindra, which saw 11 leadership changes in the past 15 months, and the movement count at the company’s senior management swelled to at least 20 since March last year.
Some analysts said the changes were AI-induced.
“The industry has hit a slowdown and it’s now much harder to grow. AI looks to be disrupting the industry,” said Peter Bendor-Samuel, founder of Everest Group, adding that mid-sized firms are looking at attracting leaders from larger firms “as they believe that these executives understand how to scale.”
Automation has disrupted the country’s $283-billion IT industry, as Fortune companies push tech service providers to deliver more at lower costs. This comes at a time when IT outsourcers are grappling with low demand and tariff volatility.
A third expert said that mid-caps were struggling to find the right talent to build high-value customer relationships.
“Many of these managers lack strategic thinking skills and are far too P&L (profit and loss) focused, so when the business is struggling, they struggle to build the right client relationships to be effective,” said Phil Fersht, chief executive of HFS Research.
Fersht also echoed Bendor-Samuel’s views, adding that “more talent from the large providers is coming onto the job market so it’s easier for the likes of Persistent, Coforge and Mphasis to upgrade their teams, hence the heavy turnover we are seeing.”
