Syntel today announced that Prashant Ranade, its current Chief Executive Officer and President, will become Executive Vice Chairman of Syntel Inc.’s Board of Directors. He will be succeeded by Nitin Rakesh, President—Americas, Business Development and Near Shoring Center as the new CEO, effective since April 21, 2014.
Before rejoining Syntel, Nitin served as Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Motilal Oswal Asset Management Company, Ltd., a financial services company, from September 2008 to September 2012. He previously developed and led Syntel’s Knowledge Process Outsourcing business from 2002 until 2008, playing a pivotal role in building KPO into a high performing service line.
“I am honoured to accept this opportunity to lead Syntel,” said Nitin Rakesh. “Syntel has benefited immensely from the strong leadership and vision provided by Bharat, Prashant and the Board. I look forward to building on our growth momentum and continuing to create new opportunities for our clients,” said Rakesh.
Talking about the appointment Ranade said, “It has been a privilege to lead Syntel for the past four years as CEO and President. Nitin’s promotion reflects our commitment to people development and providing growth opportunities to leaders. He has consistently demonstrated strong leadership and an appreciation of our core values and culture that will enable him to lead Syntel to continued long-term success. I look forward to working with Nitin in my new role as Executive Vice Chairman.”
Ranade also talked about how Syntel has seen good growth over the last five years with a CAGR of 18% between 2009 to 2013, an operating income growth of 21% and a headcount CAGR of 17% within the same period. Ranade was of the view that the company will continue to grow faster than the market.
The announcement was also accompanied by the unveiling of the company’s new cross-servicing service line called Syntel Digital One. Noting a convergence in the social, mobile, analytical and cloud requirements among organisations, the company is introducing the new service which will consolidate its existing digital enterprise services, including enterprise mobility, cloud computing, big data analytics, social media and Internet of Things into a single service platform.
According to Rakesh, a lot of companies today are trying to take a ‘mobile first’ approach to the services that they offer to their customers and want to monitor the data being generated to know and serve them better. The integrated service line will help the enterprises build these capabilities into their offerings to their customers.
