Happiest Minds names Joseph Anantharaju as CEO, makes top-deck changes

Bengaluru-headquartered Happiest Minds Technologies on Wednesday announced apex-level changes in its organisation structure, effective immediately. 

Joseph Anantharaju has been elevated to Co-Chairman and CEO of the IT services firm, according to a company statement. He will now head all business divisions of the company: Product & Digital Engineering Services (PDES), Infrastructure Management & Security Services (IMSS), and GenAI Business Services (GBS). Earlier, he served as the executive vice chairman, president & CEO of the PDES Division up till now.

The company's Chairman Ashok Soota will now take up an additional position as the Chief Mentor.

Venkatraman Narayanan will continue as the MD & CFO of Happiest Minds. He will head the finance, talent acquisition, internal IT, learning & development, ESG, CSR, procurement and administration teams. Anantharaju and Narayanan will be jointly responsible for M&A and Board matters, the statement said, adding that they will report independently to Soota.

Ashok Soota added that “Happiest Minds is currently finalising FY26 plans and the organic growth outlook is encouraging, thanks to the transformational changes of the last 18 months.  I would like to thank our dedicated teams for their contributions to Happiest Minds’ success.  Finally, I would like to thank the Happiest Minds Board, which has guided me through this period of planned succession planning and organization transformation.”

Last month, the mid-tier IT services firm, reported a 16 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) drop in its profit after tax (PAT) for the third quarter of the current financial year (FY25) at Rs 50 crore due to higher finance costs. However, the revenue for the quarter grew 27.5 per cent to Rs 553 crore compared with the year-ago period.