Spotlight: CXO movement this week (Aug 17- Aug 23)

The week of August 17-23 marked significant leadership changes in the technology industry. Technology majors like Cognizant, Sify and Avaya made some important executive announcements in key business positions. Movements also happened at the professional networking platform LinkedIn product engineering services firm Zapcom. Here's the roundup:

Cognizant appoints Rajesh Varrier as new India MD, Nambiar steps down

Cognizant India has announced the appointment of Rajesh Varrier as the new chairman and managing director, effective October 1. Varrier replaces Rajesh Nambiar in this role who leaves Cognizant to become the president of IT body Nasscom, succeeding Debjani Ghosh. Varrier will also take on the role of global head of operations and executive vice president of Cognizant, reporting to CEO Ravi Kumar S. A graduate of Mumbai University, Varrier previously served as the EVP, head of global services at Infosys Americas, as well as the global head of Infosys’ digital and Microsoft businesses. He has also worked at Aditya Birla Sun Life Insurance and founded the analytics firm Activecubes in the past. (Read more)

Sify ropes in former AWS exec to head its data centre unit

Sify Technologies, an Indian IT firm, has announced the appointment of Sharad Agarwal as the new Chief Executive Officer of Sify Infinit Spaces, its fully-owned subsidiary specializing in data center services for both Indian and global enterprise clients, including hyperscalers. Agarwal brings extensive experience in technology business across multiple sectors such as e-commerce, logistics, retail, cloud computing, and data centres. Before joining Sify, he held positions at Vantage and Amazon Web Services, where he acquired significant expertise in data centre business development and capacity delivery. (Read more)

LinkedIn India appoints a new Country manager

Microsoft-owned professional networking platform LinkedIn announced on Friday that it has appointed Kumaresh Pattabiraman as Country Manager and Product Lead for LinkedIn India. Before this promotion, he served as a senior director, overseeing product, feed, search, and Generative AI offerings. With over 135 million members, India stands as LinkedIn's second-largest and fastest-growing market. Pattabiraman has been a part of LinkedIn for over a decade. He started his career as a software engineer at Google, later working in organizations such as Gitadel Investment Group and Microsoft Corporation. He is an alumnus of the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. (Read more)

Zapcom Group gets a new CTO

Product engineering services provider Zapcom Group has appointed Prasanth Nair as its new Chief Technology Officer (CTO). With a career spanning over 24 years, Nair brings extensive experience from Fortune 50 companies and venture-backed startups, making him a significant addition to Zapcom's leadership team. In his new role, Nair will oversee all engineering activities and resources at Zapcom. His leadership experience includes key roles at Amazon, Flipkart, Alibaba, Yahoo!, and ClearTax. Most recently, he served as Senior Vice President and Head of Engineering at Bizongo. Nair holds a bachelor of engineering degree from the University of Madras. (Read more)

Avaya appoints Phil Zammit as VP for APAC

Enterprise customer experience firm Avaya has appointed Phil Zammit as the vice president for the Asia-Pacific theatre, including India, Japan, and Greater China. In this role, Zammit will focus on strengthening the company’s relationships with customers and partners by leveraging his APAC-specific expertise, while also expanding the company’s leadership in the Enterprise CX category. He is based in Sydney, Australia, and has worked at organizations such as Zoom, Cisco, AWS, and Telstra in the past. He specializes in developing high-performing teams by leading regional business strategies to address local market needs. (Read more)