Wipro sues former CFO Dalal in court
Wipro, an IT business, filed a lawsuit this month against Jatin Dalal, its former CFO, who joined competitor Cognizant this month. Dalal will take over for Jan Siegmund at Cognizant, the firm revealed earlier in September. Dalal will be accountable to Ravi Kumar S., the chief executive officer. Wipro has filed a lawsuit in a Bengaluru civil court.
Despite Wipro and Cognizant’s silence, rumors have it that Dalal has asked the court to transfer the case to arbitration, with a hearing set for January 3. Dalal started working at Wipro in 2002. In April 2015, he was promoted to chief financial officer. Starting in December 2019, he also took on new duties as president.
Prior to that, he worked as the global finance head of the energy and utilities, manufacturing, and healthcare business units at Wipro, as well as the UK head of finance for the Europe area. From 2011 to 2015, he was the CFO of Wipro’s Global IT Business.
It’s unclear why the lawsuit was filed. This occurred a few days after Mohd Haque, the former senior vice-president and head of healthcare and medical devices-Americas, was accused of violating his employment contract’s non-compete provision by the IT business in a lawsuit. He left the corporation before to the non-compete agreement’s August 1, 2023, expiry.
Recently, he joined Cognizant. This year, Wipro has lost a number of senior-level employees, including Sanjeev Singh, the head of operations, Americas One CFO Kamini Shah, India business head Satya Easwaran, and CFO Nithin V Jaganmohan for Americas Two and iDEAS, respectively. Senior Vice President Ashish Saxena also left the company recently.
As a few senior workers left to join the company, rumors had it that Infosys sent a letter to Cognizant. Both Infosys and Cognizant did not respond to inquiries. After taking over as CEO of Cognizant in January, Infosys veteran Ravi Kumar recruited a number of top executives from both Wipro and Infosys.
“As the IT industry navigates multiple cost-cutting steps and a muted hiring outlook, we conjecture that leaders joining rival firms may stem from firms going above and beyond to find strategic leadership to win over economic uncertainties and a vision backed by agility and adaptability,” stated Sachin Alug, chief executive officer of NLB Services, in reference to senior-level departures.
