Phaneesh Murthy Biography

Phaneesh Murthy, currently the CEO of iGATE has, over the last two decades, created three large transformations in the Global IT industry. In recognition of his exemplary entrepreneurship, he received the “Outstanding Entrepreneurship” Award for 2011, instituted by Enterprise Asia.

In the 1990s, Phaneesh Murthy was an integral part of the industry that created the huge IT Outsourcing market in India. As the Global Sales head of Infosys, he has been widely credited as the one who was responsible for taking the organization from just $2 million in revenues to $700 million in under 10 years.

Known for his entrepreneurial spirit, Mr. Murthy in 2002, through his start-up firm, Quintant, embarked upon his second large transformation. He later merged the company with iGATE. Eight years since taking over as the CEO of iGATE, he has transformed the company from a staffing firm with losses and negative margins, to a firm with best-in-class earnings growth. He achieved this high focus on profitability through his industry-pioneering Business Outcomes-based delivery model, that has now come to be accepted in the industry, and is increasingly being adopted by Global customers. Under Mr. Murthy’s leadership, iGATE grew from $80 million to $1 billion in revenue in under eight years. This has clearly reconfirmed him as a thought leader in the industry.

Phaneesh Murthy’s third transformation is already being pegged as a major trendsetter for the industry. Against all odds, in 2011, he challenged the previously unheard of scenario of a mid-sized IT company buying out a company that is more than double its size. In the largest leveraged trans-border buyout, Phaneesh led iGATE’s acquisition of Patni Computer Systems, with the vision of making the combined entity not just a large Tier 1 player delivering Business Outcomes-based solutions, but also one that would have the best-in-class earnings growth in the industry.

Phaneesh's achievements include:

• Responsible for the phenomenal surge in Infosys' revenues.
• Instrumental in the first NASDAQ listing by an Indian IT company.
• Pioneering the Outcomes-Based business model for the Indian IT industry.
• Transforming a loss-making mid-sized company to a billion dollar Tier 1 player with best-in-class margins.
• Catapulting the market capitalization of a mid-sized company by over 10 times in less than seven years.
• Succeeding in completing IT industry's biggest leveraged buy-out by iGATE of Patni — a company more than double its size.

Mr. Murthy graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai and earned his masters at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India's premier Technology and Management Institutes.