THE APPOINTMENT OF Dr.Vishal Sikka, a Stanford alumnus and former chief technology officer of SAP AG as the new executive chairman of the Bangalore-based IT services major Infosys Technologies Ltd (annual revenue: Rs.50,133 crore) with effect from August 1, bodes well for this company, which until recently symbolised post-liberalisation India™s entrepreneurial resurgence and new technologies management capabilities. But of late, this darling of the stockmarkets has been through considerable turbulence, with a debilitating exodus of top-rung professionals and loss of market valuation. The prime cause of the decline is that after its spectacular initial success, the company adopted a policy of rotationally rewarding its promoter-directors with the position of chief executive rather than inducting more proven professionals. Hence the talent exodus and eroding reputation. To rectify this situation, in 2013 N.R. Narayana Murthy, the founder chairman of Infosys who retired in 2011, returned to the helm of the company to restore its glory days. But to no avail. To his credit, Murthy resigned for the second time. Enter Sikka. The grave shortcoming of Murthy and the technocrat promoter CEOs who gave the company an excellent launch, was a mofussil mindset which prevented them from advertising Infosys™ many great achievements. To accurately convey a company™s core competencies, character and achievements, intensive ad campaigns which tell its story from its own perspective, are necessary. That™s why IT companies such as Microsoft, Intel, Dell, IBM and Apple have huge global ad budgets and campaigns. The mofussil mindset of the company™s technocrat founder-directors including Murthy, has cost the company heavily in terms of market perception and sunk its intelligent plan to transform into a global business consultancy and total solutions heavyweight. Infosys™ new CEO would do well to heed this gratuitous advice, and discard the company™s penny wise communications policy to trumpet its great achievements and messages to the public worldwide, loud and clear. Greedy compradors RATHER BELATEDLY, the somnolent Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) has issued draft guidelines which ” subject to approval by all ill-defined stakeholders ” could rein in manufacturers and advertisers of skin lightening creams. The guidelines state that œspecifically, advertising should not directly or implicitly show people with darker skin as unattractive, unhappy, depressed or concerned¦ or inferior, or unsuccessful in any aspect of life particularly in relation to being attractive to the opposite sex, matrimony, job placement, promotions and other prospects. Unfortunately these guidelines have come six decades too late. In the meanwhile manufacturers/marketers of skin lightening creams led by the hypocritical transnational Unilever India (formerly Hindustan Lever), have manipulated the social and historical insecurities of the population to equate skin tones and complexions of the once hated ˜Red Devils™ to build an anti-social Rs.3,500 crore fairness creams and lotions industry in India. Unsurprisingly, this white-is-right propaganda has been bought hook, line and sinker by the brain-dead badshahs of Bollywood and television and the fashion industry to the extent that ethnic Indian women ” adulated and admired the world over for their natural tan skin tones ”…
