Nearly three decades after it was born, India's second-largest IT company Infosys announced that it had found three wise men who it hopes will reinvent and take it to the next level of growth. KV Kamath , non-executive chairman of ICICI Bank, will replace iconic founder NR Narayana Murthy, who will retire this year after nearly 30 years with the company.

Kamath will be the first 'outsider' to head the company's board. The banker, already an independent director with Infosys, will be helped in this task by Kris Gopalakrishnan , the CEO, who has now been made new executive co-chairman.

SD Shibulal , the chief operating officer, who briefly left the company in the 1990s to establish Sun Microsystems' e-commerce division, and is recognised as one of the company's best technical minds, will be the new CEO and MD.

Murthy's exit-his last day at Infosys will be August 21, 2011-will mark the end of an era for the company. Only two of the original seven founders of the company-Gopalakrishnan and Shibulal-will remain in the company.

The changes come at a time when Infosys is struggling to close the gap with larger rival TCS and trying to fend off a strong challenge from a slew of rivals like Cognizant. Growth has slowed, margins are under pressure and the awe that it used to inspire among competitors and customers alike is markedly absent.

The company, long used to setting lofty standards and attaining them with ease, struggled with earnings for the fourth quarter of 2010-11 and two of its veteran stalwarts left last month amid murmurs of dissent at the top.

It is perhaps to address this perception that the company announced on 30. April.2011, Saturday that some members of the management council, the next level of decision makers after the board, will be elevated to the board in June.

Kamath might just be the man for fixing the problems Infosys faces. Under him, ICICI Bank transformed itself from a development bank into a diversified financial services group. More importantly, Kamath also groomed industry leaders like Chanda Kochhar and Shikha Sharma who today head large organisations such as ICICI and Axis Bank .

"I think Kamath is a very focused person. He has built a tremendous institution at ICICI. They are always very proud of what he built, including the management around him. So I think he brings the perspective of relations, institution building and domain expertise in terms of financial services. I think all of these are very important for any company that is growth-bound for the future," said S Ramadorai, non-executive vice-chairman of TCS.

Source: 1. May. 2011, ET