Philips’s Krish Shankar may become Infosys HR head

BENGALURU: Philips India HR head Krish Shankar has emerged the front-runner for the position of global HR head at Infosys.

This could be the first time in its 33-year history that the company is bring an external candidate to fill the position. Previous HR heads included Hema Ravichandar, T V Mohandas Pai, Bikramjit Maitra and Nandita Gurjar.

The position today is extremely challenging for two reasons. One, the company now employs 1.8 lakh people, making it one of the biggest employers in India. And two, the $8.7-billion firm is trying to breathe new life into its HR organization as it seeks to position itself as a next-generation IT services company where the lines between products and services become blurred and there’s a move away from headcount-linked growth to offering productized solutions leveraging on artificial intelligence, robotics and automation.

Shankar, an alumnus of Stanford Graduate School of Business, was previously the executive director – HR in Bharti Airtel, and moved to the Netherlands-based diversified tech conglomerate Philips early last year.

Shankar, who has nearly 30 years of experience in the HR industry, spent two decades at Unilever. In his last assignment with the FMCG major, he served as the VP-HR for Asia-AMET (Africa, Middle East, Turkey).