the Threatening Face of Artificial Intelligence - Facebook Chatbot Created its own Language

Facebook (FB) has shut down one of its AI systems after Chatbots started speaking in their own language defying the codes provided.

According to a report in Tech Times on Sunday, the social media giant had to pull the plug on the AI system that its researchers were working on "because things got out of hand". Initially the AI agents used English to converse with each other but they later created a new language that only AI systems could understand, thus, defying their purpose. This led Facebook researchers to shut down the AI systems and then force them to speak to each other only in English.

What is a Chatbot?
A Chatbot (also known as a Talkbot, Chatterbot, Bot, Chatterbox, IM Bot, Interactive Agent, Artificial Conversational Entity) is a computer program which conducts a conversation via auditory or textual methods. Such programs are often designed to convincingly simulate how a human would behave as a conversational partner, thereby passing the Turing Test. Chatbots are typically used in Dialog Systems for various practical purposes including customer service or information acquisition. Some chatterbots use sophisticated NLP (Natural Language Processing) systems, but many simpler systems scan for keywords within the input, then pull a reply with the most matching keywords, or the most similar wording pattern, from a database.

Mark Zuckerberg in Facebook office

What happened at FB? How did it happen?
In June, researchers from the Facebook AI Research Lab (FAIR) found that while they were busy trying to improve Chatbots, the "Dialogue Agents" were creating their own language. Soon, the bots began to deviate from the scripted norms and started communicating in an entirely new language which they created without human input. Using machine learning algorithms, the "dialogue agents" were left to converse freely in an attempt to strengthen their conversational skills. The researchers also found these bots to be "incredibly crafty negotiators". After learning to negotiate, the bots relied on machine learning and advanced strategies in an attempt to improve the outcome of these negotiations. Over time, the bots became quite skilled at it and even began feigning interest in one item in order to 'sacrifice' it at a later stage in the negotiation as a faux compromise.

Is it Threatening?
Of course, it is !!! Several experts including Professor Stephen Hawking have raised fears that humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, could be superseded by AI. Others like Tesla's Elon Musk, Microsoft's founder Bill Gates and Apple's cofounder Steve Wozniak have also expressed their concerns about where the AI technology was heading. Musk has been speaking frequently on AI and has called its progress the "biggest risk we face as a civilization". "AI is a rare case where we need to be proactive in regulation instead of reactive because if we're reactive in AI regulation it's too late," he said.

Source:

Businessinsider.in/Facebook-shuts-AI-system-after-bots-create-own-language/amp_articleshow/59843141.cms

Artificial Intelligence goals - Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Robotics, etc.

Artificial intelligence (AI); also called Machine Intelligence (MI); is intelligence exhibited by machines. 

Goal of AI is to create technology that allows machines to function in an intelligent manner.

Research from Oxford & Yale predicts the years when AI will take over Human tasks

The general problem of simulating (or creating) intelligence has been broken down into sub-problems - These consist of particular traits/capabilities that researchers expect an intelligent system to display.The traits described below have received the most attention-

[1] Reasoning, Problem Solving

Early researchers developed algorithms that imitated step-by-step reasoning that humans use when they solve puzzles or make logical deductions. By the late 1980s and 1990s, AI research had developed methods for dealing with uncertain or incomplete information, employing concepts from probability and economics.

For difficult problems, algorithms can require enormous computational resources (most experience a "combinatorial explosion" - the amount of memory or computer time required becomes astronomical for problems of a certain size).

So, the search for more efficient problem-solving algorithms is a high priority.

Human beings ordinarily use fast, intuitive judgments rather than step-by-step deduction that early AI research was able to model. AI has progressed using "sub-symbolic" problem solving:
[a] Embodied Agent approaches emphasize the importance of sensorimotor skills to higher reasoning
[b] Neural Net research attempts to simulate the structures inside the brain that give rise to this skill
[c] Statistical approaches to AI mimic the human ability to guess.

[2] Knowledge Representation, Commonsense Knowledge

Knowledge Representation and Knowledge Engineering are central to AI research. Many of the problems machines are expected to solve will require extensive knowledge about the world. Among the things that AI needs to represent are: objects, properties, categories and relations between objects; situations, events, states and time; causes and effects; knowledge about knowledge (what we know about what other people know); and many other, less well researched domains.

A representation of "what exists" is an Ontology: the set of objects, relations, concepts, and properties formally described so that software agents can interpret them. The semantics of these are captured as description logic concepts, roles, and individuals, and typically implemented as classes, properties, and individuals in the Web Ontology Language.

The most general ontologies are called upper ontologies, which attempt to provide a foundation for all other knowledge[55] by acting as mediators between domain ontologies that cover specific knowledge about a particular knowledge domain (field of interest or area of concern). Such formal knowledge representations are suitable for content-based indexing and retrieval, scene interpretation, clinical decision support, knowledge discovery via automated reasoning (inferring new statements based on explicitly stated knowledge), etc. Video events are often represented as SWRL rules, which can be used, among others, to automatically generate subtitles for constrained videos.

Among the most difficult problems in knowledge representation are:

[a] Default Reasoning and the Qualification Problem
Many of the things people know take the form of "working assumptions". For example, if a bird comes up in conversation, people typically picture an animal that is fist sized, sings, and flies. None of these things are true about all birds. John McCarthy identified this problem in 1969 as the qualification problem: for any commonsense rule that AI researchers care to represent, there tend to be a huge number of exceptions. Almost nothing is simply true or false in the way that abstract logic requires. AI research has explored a number of solutions to this problem.

[b] The Breadth of Commonsense Knowledge
The number of atomic facts that the average person knows is very large. Research projects that attempt to build a complete knowledge base of commonsense knowledge (e.g., Cyc) require enormous amounts of laborious ontological engineering—they must be built, by hand, one complicated concept at a time. A major goal is to have the computer understand enough concepts to be able to learn by reading from sources like the Internet, and thus be able to add to its own ontology.

[c] The Subsymbolic form of some Commonsense Knowledge
Much of what people know is not represented as "facts" or "statements" that they could express verbally. For example, a chess master will avoid a particular chess position because it "feels too exposed" or an art critic can take one look at a statue and realize that it is a fake. These are non-conscious and sub-symbolic intuitions or tendencies in the human brain. Knowledge like this informs, supports and provides a context for symbolic, conscious knowledge. As with the related problem of sub-symbolic reasoning, it is hoped that situated AI, computational intelligence, or statistical AI will provide ways to represent this kind of knowledge.

[3] Automated Planning and Scheduling

Intelligent agents must be able to Set Goals and Achieve them. They need a way to visualize the future - a representation of the state of the world and be able to make predictions about how their actions will change it - and be able to make choices that maximize the utility (or "value") of available choices.

In classical planning problems, the agent can assume that it is the only system acting in the world, allowing the agent to be certain of the consequences of its actions. However, if the agent is not the only actor, then it requires that the agent can reason under uncertainty. This calls for an agent that cannot only assess its environment and make predictions, but also evaluate its predictions and adapt based on its assessment.

Multi-agent planning uses the cooperation and competition of many agents to achieve a given goal. Emergent behavior such as this is used by evolutionary algorithms and swarm intelligence.

[4] Machine Learning (ML) (Read in detail here)

Machine learning, is the study of Computer Algorithms that Improve Automatically through Experience.

Unsupervised Learning is the ability to find patterns in a stream of input.
Supervised Learning includes both classification and numerical regression.
Classification is used to determine what category something belongs in, after seeing a number of examples of things from several categories.
Regression is the attempt to produce a function that describes the relationship between inputs and outputs and predicts how the outputs should change as the inputs change.
In Reinforcement Learning the agent is rewarded for good responses and punished for bad ones. The agent uses this sequence of rewards and punishments to form a strategy for operating in its problem space.

These three types of learning can be analyzed in terms of decision theory, using concepts like utility. The mathematical analysis of machine learning algorithms and their performance is a branch of theoretical computer science known as computational learning theory.

Within developmental robotics, developmental learning approaches are elaborated upon to allow robots to accumulate repertoires of novel skills through autonomous self-exploration, social interaction with human teachers, and the use of guidance mechanisms (active learning, maturation, motor synergies, etc.).

[5] Natural Language Processing (NLP)

NLP gives machines the ability to Read/Understand Human Language.

A sufficiently powerful NLP system would enable NL UIs and the acquisition of knowledge directly from human-written sources, such as newswire texts. Some straightforward applications of natural language processing include information retrieval, text mining, question answering, machine translation.

A common method of processing and extracting meaning from natural language is through Semantic Indexing. Although these indexes require a large volume of user input, it is expected that increases in processor speeds and decreases in data storage costs will result in greater efficiency.

[6] Perception

Machine perception is the ability to use input from sensors (such as cameras, microphones, tactile sensors, sonar and others) to deduce aspects of the world.

Computer Vision is the ability to analyze visual input.

A few selected sub-problems are Speech Recognition, Facial Recognition, Object Recognition.

[7] Robotics

Intelligence is required for Robots to handle tasks (such as object manipulation and navigation, with sub-problems such as localization, mapping, and motion planning).

These systems require that an agent is able to:
[a] Be spatially cognizant of its surroundings
[b] Learn from and build a map of its environment
[c] Figure out how to get from one point in space to another
[d] Execute that movement (which often involves compliant motion, a process where movement requires maintaining physical contact with an object)

[8] Social intelligence & Affective computing

Affective computing is the study and development of systems that can Recognize, Interpret, Process, and Simulate Human Affects. It is an interdisciplinary field spanning computer sciences, psychology, and cognitive science. A motivation for the research is the ability to simulate empathy, where the machine would be able to interpret human emotions and adapts its behavior to give an appropriate response to those emotions.

Emotion and social skills are important to an intelligent agent for two reasons:
[a] Being able to predict the actions of others by understanding their motives and emotional states allow an agent to make better decisions. Concepts such as Game Theory, Decision Theory, necessitate that an agent be able to detect and model human emotions.
[b] In an effort to facilitate HCI (Human-Computer Interaction), an intelligent machine may want to display emotions (even if it does not experience those emotions itself) to appear more sensitive to the emotional dynamics of human interaction.

[9] Creativity & Computational creativity

A sub-field of AI addresses Creativity both
[a] Theoretically (the Philosophical Psychological perspective)
[b] Practically (the specific implementation of Systems that Generate Novel and Useful Outputs)

[10] General Intelligence - Artificial General Intelligence and AI-complete

Many researchers think that their work will eventually be incorporated into a machine with artificial general intelligence, combining all the skills mentioned above and even exceeding human ability in most or all these areas.

A few believe that anthropomorphic features like Artificial Consciousness or an Artificial Brain may be required for such a project.

Many of the problems above also require that general intelligence be solved. For example, even specific straightforward tasks, like machine translation, require that a machine read and write in both languages (NLP), follow the author's argument (reason), know what is being talked about (knowledge), and faithfully reproduce the author's original intent (social intelligence). A problem like machine translation is considered "AI-complete", but all of these problems need to be solved simultaneously in order to reach human-level machine performance.

Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence

the Threatening Face of Artificial Intelligence - Google AI tool removes Shutterstock watermarks

Google’s researchers built an Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered tool that could easily remove the watermarks that Shutterstock uses to protect all of its images across the website.

What is Shutterstock?
Shutterstock is an american stock photography company that sells licensed images. To protect its images-on-the-display from getting copied (read 'stolen'), it watermarks them.

a sample shutterstock image with watermarks

How does the AI tool work?
Once Google’s tool analyzes hundreds of pictures with consistent semi transparent watermarks it learns to look at a photo and decide which pixel was a watermark and which wasn’t. It could then remove all the watermark pixels in any given image.

Why is this threatening?
People can manually remove watermarks today, using image editing tools like Photoshop, but this tool is automatic - it clean the watermarks off hundreds of images in the time it would take a human to clean one. So, anyone who can build such a tool can steal all images and build a parallel-similar marketplace.

What is Shutterstock doing handling such risks?
Shutterstock could lessen its risk by making its watermarks random. If the pattern changes across every image, an algorithm would have a much tougher time removing it completely.

Source:

https://qz.com/1059765/google-goog-taught-artificial-intelligence-a-whole-new-way-to-steal-pictures-online

Reliance launches 'India ka 4G Smartphone' - JioPhone

Reliance Jio's stormy entry into $26B Indian telecom market riding on big freebies in 2016-17 changed rules of the game. With its second wave of disruption - JioPhone (4G Smartphone) - it is expected to end up leading the game.

Why JioPhone?
JioPhone (priced effectively at ZERO rupees) will target the 60% Indian (750M) Featurephone users who have been wary of shifting to Smartphones due to the affordability factor and lack of use case. After a speedy start, Jio had seen a slowdown in its customer acquisition pace, mainly due to the limited number of affordable 4G handsets in the market - JioPhone will remove this hurdle.

What are competitors upto?
Airtel is in talks with handset makers to introduce a 4G smartphone by Diwali for INR 2.5k, bundling large amounts of data and voice with the device.
Vodafone has bundled voice plans and cashback with 2G feature phones from China’s itel

Source:

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/60232005.cms

Julia - Free Open-source High-level High-capacity language - for Techies

Awesome news for our Technology Community-
Data Scientists, Researchers, Analysts no longer need to solve problems in one language and apply solutions in a second language, as has been the practice. Now they can use a single language Julia for prototyping as well as production.

What is Julia?
Julia language; developed by 2 years old India & US based startup Julia Computing; has already been adopted by enterprises spanning finance, robotics, energy, health, aerospace, genomics - used to guide self-driving vehicles, analyze images from deep space, help surgeons visualize patients' internal organs during surgery, assist the Federal Reserve Bank in conducting economic forecasts, drive the FAA's Next-Gen Aircraft Collision Avoidance System and much more.

Features- 
[1] free
[2] opensource
[3] high-level language
[4] fast, high capacity, easily deals with large datasets

Numbers-
Julia has seen over 1M downloads - a number that grew by 161% just last year - JuliaBox alone has over 75,000 registered users. It is also reportedly one of the top 10 Programming languages developed on GitHub.

team of Julia Computing

Source:

https://juliacomputing.com/assets/img/new/full_company.jpg

Eeconomictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/why-amazon-disney-and-uber-are-courting-this-two-year-old-startup-julia-computing-viral-shah/printarticle/60169227.cms

Machine Learning (ML) types

In this post, we will try to decipher what is ML (Machine Learning) and what are its types?

In layman terms-
Machine Learning (ML) gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed.

In simple-technical terms-
In ML you construct algorithms that can learn from and make predictions on data.

_____________________________________
Machine learning tasks are typically classified into three broad categories, depending on the nature of the learning "signal" or "feedback" available to a learning system:

[1] Supervised learning
The computer is presented with example inputs and their desired outputs, given by a "teacher", and the goal is to learn a general rule that maps inputs to outputs.

[2] Unsupervised learning
No labels are given to the learning algorithm, leaving it on its own to find structure in its input. Unsupervised learning can be a goal in itself (discovering hidden patterns in data) or a means towards an end (feature learning).

[3] Reinforcement learning
A computer program interacts with a dynamic environment in which it must perform a certain goal (such as driving a vehicle or playing a game against an opponent). The program is provided feedback in terms of rewards and punishments as it navigates its problem space.

[4] Semi-supervised learning
Between supervised and unsupervised learning is semi-supervised learning, where the teacher gives an incomplete training signal: a training set with some (often many) of the target outputs missing. Transduction is a special case of this principle where the entire set of problem instances is known at learning time, except that part of the targets are missing.

_____________________________________
ML tasks can also be categorized into following:

[1] Deep learning - the application of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) to learning tasks that contain more than one hidden layer.

[2] Shallow learning - ML tasks with a single hidden layer.

_____________________________________
Another categorization of ML tasks arises when one considers the desired output of a machine-learned system:

[1] Classification
In classification, inputs are divided into two or more classes, and the learner must produce a model that assigns unseen inputs to one or more (multi-label classification) of these classes. This is typically tackled in a supervised way. Spam filtering is an example of classification, where the inputs are email (or other) messages and the classes are "spam" and "not spam".

[2] Regression
In regression, also a supervised problem, the outputs are continuous rather than discrete.

[3] Clustering
In clustering, a set of inputs is to be divided into groups. Unlike in classification, the groups are not known beforehand, making this typically an unsupervised task.

[4] Density estimation
Density estimation finds the distribution of inputs in some space.

[5] Dimentionality
Dimensionality reduction simplifies inputs by mapping them into a lower-dimensional space. Topic modeling is a related problem, where a program is given a list of human language documents and is tasked to find out which documents cover similar topics.

Sources:

Datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/machine-learning-summarized-in-one-picture

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_learning

Data Analytics, Data Analysis, Data Mining, Data Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Internet of Things

in a single line:

Data Science is an area of expertise where you Analyze the Analytical data that you found after Mining the Big Data.

_______________________________
What is ML (Machine Learning), AI (Artificial Intelligence), DL (Deep Learning), IoT (Internet of Things)?

ML is sometimes quoted as the core-link between Data Science (a stream where you find meaning out of data) and AI (a stream where you want to make machines self-intelligent). ML; from the mentioned perspective; lets AI use DS.

Machine learning is a set of algorithms that train on a data set to make predictions or take actions in order to optimize some systems. For instance, supervised classification algorithms are used to classify potential clients into good or bad prospects, for loan purposes, based on historical data. The techniques involved, for a given task (e.g. supervised clustering), are varied: naive Bayes, SVM, neural nets, ensembles, association rules, decision trees, logistic regression, or a combination of many.

When these Machine Learning algorithms are automated, as in automated piloting or driver-less cars, it is called Artificial Intelligence (AI). 

If the data collected comes from sensors and if it is transmitted via the Internet, then it is machine learning or data science or deep learning applied to Internet of Things (IoT).

_______________________________
What is Big Data?

Big data refers to datasets whose size is beyond the ability of typical database software tools to capture, store, manage, and analyze.

This definition is intentionally subjective and incorporates a moving definition of how big a dataset needs to be in order to be considered big data - i.e., we need not define big data in terms of being larger than a certain number of terabytes (thousands of gigabytes). We assume that, as technology advances over time, the size of datasets that qualify as big data will also increase. Also note that the definition can vary by sector, depending on what kinds of software tools are commonly available and what sizes of datasets are common in a particular industry. With those caveats, big data in many sectors today will range from a few dozen terabytes to multiple petabytes.

Source:

Datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/difference-between-machine-learning-data-science-ai-deep-learning
Some parts of  this post have also been copied from a answer written on Quora which picked its stuff from a Mckinsey report

the Battle of Infosys Board and Narayana Murthy

Since Vishal Sikka has quit Infosys as CEO/MD, the battle of Infosys Board and its founder N R Narayana Murthy has been getting dirtier.

Vishal Sikka (L in black suit) & Narayana Murhty (R in white tee-shirt)

Infosys has shared a letter with the Stock Exchange where it has issued a rebuttal to charges put up by Mr. Murthy in his prior letters.

Below is a copy of the official letter posted by Infosys on its Website's Press Releases' section:

Press Releases
Company Statement
Bangalore – August 18, 2017

It has come to the attention of the Board that a letter authored by Mr. Murthy, the Founder of Infosys has been released to various media houses attacking the integrity of the Board and Management of the Company alleging falling corporate governance standards in the Company. The Board takes great umbrage to the contents of the letter and places on record the following:

Mr. Murthy's continuous assault, including this latest letter, is the primary reason that the CEO, Dr. Vishal Sikka, has resigned despite strong Board support.
Mr. Murthy’s letter contains factual inaccuracies, already-disproved rumours, and statements extracted out of context from his conversations with Board members.
The Board assures its shareholders, employees, customers and communities that it is committed not to be distracted by this misguided campaign by Mr. Murthy and will continue to adhere to the highest international standards of corporate governance as it executes its strategy of profitable growth for the benefit of all Infosys stakeholders.
Mr. Murthy’s campaign against the Board and the Company has had the unfortunate effect to undermine the Company’s efforts to transform itself.
The Board has been engaged in a dialogue with the Founder to resolve his concerns over the course of a year, trying earnestly to find feasible solutions within the boundaries of law and without compromising its independence. These dialogues have unfortunately not been successful.
The Board declines to speculate about Mr. Murthy’s motive for carrying out this campaign, including the latest letter. The Board believes it must set the record straight on the false and misleading charges made by Mr. Murthy because his actions and demands are damaging the Company and misrepresent its commitment to good corporate governance.
FACT: Since Dr. Vishal Sikka was appointed as MD and CEO in August 2014, Infosys has delivered competitive financial performance through profitable revenue growth.

Infosys has, under the leadership of Vishal, developed and articulated a strategy to transform itself to meet the rapidly changing needs of the marketplace in the 21st century. The Company was lagging significantly behind industry in growth rates when Vishal took over and now we are in top quartile from a performance perspective.
Infosys has grown in revenues, from $2.13B in Q1FY15 to $2.65B this past Q1. This was done while keeping a strong focus on margins, closing this past quarter at 24.1% operating margin, beating some competitors for the first time in many years, and improving against nearly everyone in the industry.
The revenue per employee of the Company has grown for six quarters in a row. Attrition has fallen, from 23.4% in Q1FY15 to 16.9% this past Q1, and high performer attrition is much lower than the overall Company attrition.
The Company grew its $100M+ clients from 12 in Q1FY15, to 18 this past Q1, and increased its large deal wins from ~$1.9B in FY15 to ~$3.5B this past year. This has all been done while improving overall utilization (excluding trainees), to a 15-yr high this past quarter, and an all-time high including trainees, while improving our cash reserves, rewarding Infoscions with a new equity plan, and returning Rs. 19,000 Crores as dividend (including dividend distribution tax) over the last three years. This has all been done while improving standing with clients, to the highest ever in the 12 years with a jump of 22 points in CXO satisfaction.
FACT: Infosys has continued to maintain the highest standards of corporate governance that the Company is known for.

The Board of Infosys is carrying out its shareholder mandate to be an independent board, working towards the best interest of the stakeholders.
The Board has sought the counsel of some of the most respected governance experts and legal advisors in the world, which have thoroughly investigated all anonymous allegations and concluded that no wrongdoing occurred. For Mr. Murthy to imply – with no evidence whatsoever – that three well-respected international law firms, members of the Infosys Board and certain employees are engaged in some grand global conspiracy to conceal information is not tenable on its face. It is important to mention here that Mr. Murthy was interviewed as part of the investigation by Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP in pursuance of the investigation in the Panaya acquisition, and was invited and welcomed to provide any information or evidence he believed would support the allegations being investigated. He did not provide any evidence since none exists. However, he has not mentioned this is his media communication against the investigation.
As previously announced by the Company on June 23, 2017, the Board thoroughly investigated each anonymous allegation with the assistance of highly respected external counsel and experts and determined that the allegations were entirely without merit. The Board will make no additional disclosure of the investigation report because further disclosure would be inconsistent with best corporate audit practices and would compromise the confidence of employees that they could report honestly, openly, and candidly to the company in any future investigation or legal matter.
The Board also believes that any further use of resources and time on these matters would be a distraction for the Company and would enable those wishing unfairly to attack Company personnel to continue this harmful conduct. Therefore, the Board has formally closed the investigations of the anonymous allegations so that the Company can focus on strategy, performance, and the creation of shareholder value. The Board remains focused to continuing to support Infosys’s strategy, which it believes is in the best interests of the Company’s shareholders, employees, clients and communities.
FACT: Mr. Murthy has made repeatedly inappropriate demands which are inconsistent with his stated desire for stronger governance.

Illustratively:

Mr. Murthy has demanded that the Board adopt certain changes in policy, else he will attack board members in the public, which threat was carried out when the Board did not acquiesce;
He has demanded that the Board appoint specific individuals onto the Board under similar threat, without appropriate disclosure and without regard to basic determinants of appropriateness or fit of the candidate for the role as a Board member;
He has demanded operational and management changes under the threat of media attacks;
Notwithstanding that the remuneration package of senior management was approved overwhelmingly by shareholders (including members of the promoter group), Mr. Murthy preferred his dictat to prevail with no place or tolerance for the outcomes of shareholder democracy.
Mr. Murthy wanted the demands to be adhered to without attribution to him.
The Board has, in its fiduciary role to consider all shareholder inputs, treated each demand from Mr. Murthy as a suggestion and only acted on suggestions which we believed was in the best interest of the company and declined to act on others. Over time the demands have intensified, which when declined by the Board resulted in the threats of media attacks being carried out.

FACT: Mr. Murthy may be in the process of engaging in discussions with certain key stakeholders of the Company to further his criticisms of the Board and Management.

We are concerned that this type of campaign runs the risk of confusing investors and undermining the Company’s management efforts.

FACT: The Board is a fully independent Board, with professionals as its members who have been appointed by a clear majority of the shareholders.

Given the commitment of the Board to remain independent and pursue a chosen strategy, the Board currently has no intention of asking Mr. Murthy to play a formal role in the governance of the organization.
Co- Chair of the Board, Ravi Venkatesan has repeatedly over the past few weeks publicly stated his and the Boards support for Dr. Sikka. The Company categorically rejects any speculation or allegation of discord between the Infosys Board and Dr. Sikka.

About Infosys Ltd.
Infosys is a global leader in technology services and consulting. We enable clients in 45 countries to create and execute strategies for their digital transformation. From engineering to application development, knowledge management and business process management, we help our clients find the right problems to solve, and to solve these effectively. Our team of 198,000+ innovators, across the globe, is differentiated by the imagination, knowledge and experience, across industries and technologies that we bring to every project we undertake.

Visit www.infosys.com to see how Infosys (NYSE: INFY) can help your enterprise thrive in the digital age.

Safe Harbor
Certain statements mentioned in this release concerning our future growth prospects are forward-looking statements regarding our future business expectations intended to qualify for the 'safe harbor' under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding fluctuations in earnings, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, industry segment concentration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks or system failures, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which Infosys has made strategic investments, withdrawal or expiration of governmental fiscal incentives, political instability and regional conflicts, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, and unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our industry. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our United States Securities and Exchange Commission filings including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2017. These filings are available at www.sec.gov. Infosys may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the company unless it is required by law.

Media contacts:
For further information, please contact:
PR_Global@infosys.com

Below is a copy of the letter sent by Mr. Narayana Murthy to his advisors on August 14:

Dear Folks, 

I find that all kinds of rumors are being circulated about my letter to the Infosys board dated July 08, 2017. I just want to set the record straight, release a copy of the letter I sent to the board (regarding poor corporate governance) to the media, and ensure that people do not continue to misrepresent facts. As one of the persons who ensured that Infosys was hailed as the most respected company between 1981 and 2014 (when we, the founders and early adopters like Mohan and Bala left), I believe that it is our responsibility to ensure that the governance standard which has plummeted ever since September 2015 is brought back to a reasonable level, if not the pinnacle that it had reached during the time of the founders and early adopters.

What do some well-meaning shareholders and I want from the Infosys board? Not money, not position for our children and not power. We just do not want the board to drive this institution to death through serious governance deficits in our own life time. The best way to ensure longevity of any corporation is by pursing good governance. Businesses will go through ups and downs and that is par for the course; but bad governance is not. We just want the board to protect the institution rather than protecting some individuals like the board is doing today. This is how we enhanced the market capitalization of Infosys by a CAGR of 53.9% between 1993 when Infosys got listed in India, and 2014 when we voluntarily walked out of the company. I am told (I hope it is true) that there is no other company that has demonstrated this kind of growth in market capitalization in the history of corporate India. Why did it happen? It is because of values and good governance. Transparency was a competitive advantage of Infosys till 2014! We walked the talk. There are several examples. This is not the place to detail them.

I have not commented on Dr. Vishal Sikka’s work as is made out by the media. I have not commented about his strategy or its execution since I have not seen him operate from the vantage point of an Infosys board member. I simply do not believe in commenting on anybody without data and facts.

My problem is with governance at Infosys. I believe that the fault lies with the current board. If the board had not made inaction its strategy since September 2015, and had ensured proper governance, then the board could have created checks and balances required in any well-run company. That, alas, does not exist today. Somehow, public has been made to think by some vested interests that this is a fight between Vishal and us, the founders and the early adopters. That is simply not true.

Every question I have asked in my letter of July 08, 2017 is based on the whistle-blower complaints available in public. My objective is to ensure that the reputation of the CEO, the former Chief of Legal, the Chair of the board, the Chair of the Audit Committee, the Chair of the Remunerations Committee and the entire board are cleared once and for all, and that suitable action is taken if anybody is found guilty. During the time of the founders and the early adopters, action was taken against any individual, no matter how high he or she was.

Let me mention one important issue about the process followed by the current board in investigating these issues. The whistle-blower accuses the Chair of the board, the Chair of the Audit Committee, the Chair of the Remunerations Committee, the entire current independent members of the board (except Dr. Punita Kumar Sinha, Mr. D. N. Prahlad and Mr. D. Sundaram), the CEO, the Chief of Legal, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (CAM), Latham and Watkins (LW) and the auditors KPMG of being involved in some manner in this deplorable set of events.

I had suggested to Mr. Seshasayee on the night of February 12, 2017 (when he was distraught about the whistle-blower complaint, called me around 11.45 pm, and told me that the whistle-blower had accused him, the entire board and the CEO) that proper governance required the company to keep the investigation away from all the accused parties, to invite a set of highly respected outsiders (some of whom could be former independent members of the Infosys board including Prof. Marti Subrahmanyam and Dr. Omkar Goswami), to hire a highly respected international law firm like Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati to work under the supervision of these respected individuals, to conduct the investigation in a transparent manner, to clear the board and the management of all accusations, and to disclose the entire report on the website of the company. He just totally ignored my suggestion for some inexplicable reason.

My favorite adage is: When in doubt, disclose. For some strange reason, even my later request to disclose the details of the investigation was not accepted!

Several shareholders who have read the whistle-blower complaint have told me that it is hard to believe a report produced by a set of lawyers hired by a set of accused, such a report giving a clean chit to the accused, and the accused refusing to disclose why they got a clean chit! They say that this is a joke by any governance standard and it is not the way an impartial and objective investigation by a company like Infosys should be held.

Further, these shareholders wonder if this worrisome attitude of the current Infosys board is accepted now, then what prevents a future Chair of the board, or the Chair of the Audit Committee, or even a future CEO to commit a huge fraud, appoint a lawyer, get a clean chit, refuse to release the details of the investigation, and say everything is fine?

Now, let us come to whatever has been produced by the lawyers. Let us for a minute accept the board’s view that conversations with people unconnected with Infosys is confidential. However, let us remember that employees and former employees of Panaya involved during the acquisition cannot claim any such confidentiality privilege. For argument sake, let us even accept that the board’s claim of such a confidentiality. However, under what law should any data and conversation with any employee or even a former employee of Infosys pertaining to actual events, decisions and actions taken by these employees as part of their official duty become confidential to be kept away from shareholders? I would like Infosys “Lawyers” to enlighten me on this.

Even if the company does not want to release the names of the beneficiaries of Panaya acquisition, there cannot be any reason why Panaya valuation report, the rest of the GDC report, CAM 1 and CAM 2 reports should be considered confidential and not be released.

Further, even if the company does not want to release any of these reports, what prevents the board from answering my questions which are purely based on the whistle-blower accusations and which will, once and for all, clear the air about the special treatment shown to Mr. Rajiv Bansal and Mr. David Kennedy? Does not the board owe to the shareholders full and detailed answers to accusations by a whistle-blower that involve the entire board and the senior management?

After all, board members are the representatives of the shareholders. Under what SEBI’s and SEC’s statute can the board refuse information to shareholders? Under what law can Mr. Seshasayee and the current board refuse to answer the questions of a shareholder? What governance model is this? Please enlighten me.

It is sad that Mr. Ravi Venkatesan wrote me declining release of the information and that the board had closed the issue. This is an ultimate insult to shareholder democracy. I never ever imagined that governance levels would stoop down to such a low level in a company that was the most respected company till 2014.

The most worrisome aspect of the whistle-blower accusation is his or her claim that there was an e-mail sent by Mr. David Kennedy to Dr. Vishal Sikka that Mr. Kennedy could not hide the Bansal agreement from the board and the CFO any longer. It is best that the company scotches this accusation either by denying the existence of such an e-mail with proof and clearing the names of both Mr. Kennedy and Dr. Sikka, or by explaining to the shareholders what action was taken against the individuals who hid information from the board and from the new CFO who signs the SOX statement. Let us remember that the whistle-blower mentions even the company auditors as being part of this event!

I have respect for KPMG, GDC, LW and CAM. Rumors are circulating that the board’s refusal to clear the air is not fair to these excellent firms. The company has a responsibility to clear the names of these firms by putting all non-confidential parts of the report on the website and by putting on the website answer to every one of my questions with supporting data including e-mails. It should be done immediately to maintain the excellent reputation of these legal and audit firms. The general belief among a large number of shareholders is that the current attitude of the board is a clear example of the worst board governance in India’s corporate history.

Then there is the issue of the Chair of the board, telling shareholders at the Infosys AGM in 2016 that Mr. Bansal had some special secret competitive data and that is why the company wrote an agreement to pay him Rs. 23 Crores. There can be no confidentiality issue in releasing the part of the report that talks about the special secretive competitive data with Mr. Bansal that the investigation has unearthed. Let the board not hide this information under the garb of confidentiality. If there is no such special secretive competitive data with Mr. Bansal, then it is clear that the Chair told a blatant lie to the shareholders. What is his accountability for this lie?

I have once again given below my mail dated July 08, 2017 including my questions so that everyone on this mail is aware of these questions. 

I hope good sense will prevail on the entire board to release answers to my questions.

Several investors have expressed concern about the lack of transparency in the press release on the Gibson Dunn Crutcher (GDC) Report. The general impression in the market is that the Infosys board has spent lots of shareholder money in hiring expensive lawyers and obtained a clean chit for themselves from these lawyers. It is very important to remember that none of these expenses would have been incurred if the board and the company management had not committed serious mistakes regarding Rajiv Bansal agreement and David Kennedy agreement.

It would be proper for the board to put all the three investigation reports (Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (CAM) Report, Latham and Watkins (LW) Report and Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher (GDC) Report) and the Panaya valuation report on the website of the company, and also provide a point-by-point denial of the whistle-blower accusations fully supported by data and facts. The whistle-blower has made serious allegations and just a top-level press release is not sufficient. The company should provide answers to the following questions emanating from the whistle-blower accusations. This should not be difficult since the board claims that three separate well-known law firms have investigated the issues thoroughly and since the board has spent huge amount of money on investigations. That is the only way the board can protect the reputation of the Infosys management officials and that of the board. The questions are:

01) What were the objections of the former CFO – Mr. Rajiv Bansal regarding Panaya acquisition as evidenced by the three investigations, e-mails and transcripts of mobile conversations obtained from mobile carrier companies?

02) The following questions will have to be answered unambiguously by the company regarding Panaya acquisition.

a) Can the company categorically deny that any employee and / or his / her relative (spouse, father, mother, brothers, sisters, nephews and nieces, children, spouse’s father, mother, sisters, brothers, nephews and nieces) benefitted personally in the Panaya acquisition?

b) Can the company certify with data that the said acquisition was not overvalued as alleged by the whistle blower?

c) If the answer to question 2a is YES, then can the company provide the names of Panaya investors related to Infosys employees with the nature of their relationship to the Infosys employee (spouse, father, mother, brothers, sisters, nephews and nieces, children, spouse’s father, mother, sisters, brothers, nephews and nieces) and the number of shares they held on the date that Panaya was acquired by Infosys?

d) If that data is not accessible since some of them may have invested in a VC which in turn invested in Panaya, can the company get the VC firms to confirm whether any such named-relative of any named-employee held shares in Panaya at the time of acquisition by Infosys without disclosing any financial or shareholding details? Some well-wisher shareholders believe that any international payment today requires firms to do adequate diligence on the ultimate beneficial owners (UBOs). This is, according to them, required today everywhere for any international payment as part of compliance to Anti Money Laundering act. Therefore, these shareholders believe that it is perfectly justifiable for the company to seek ultimate beneficial ownership details of the fund that owns Panaya.

e) There is a widespread belief among the well-wisher shareholders of Infosys that the scope of the report has been defined in a manner convenient to the Infosys board and that has defeated the objective of having a thorough investigation. Please dispel this rumour by disclosing the letter retaining these three firms to do investigation.

03) The whistle-blower contends that there was an e-mail from Mr. David Kennedy, the then General Legal Counsel of Infosys, to the CEO of Infosys that he could not hide the Rajiv Bansal agreement any longer. The whistle-blower alleges that the auditors (KPMG) unearthed this e-mail and brought it to the attention of the Chair, the Legal Counsel and the CEO. This is a very serious allegation. Is this true? Can the auditors tell us if this is true? Can the company answer the following additional questions (supported by e-mails, mobile transcripts and data)?

i) Is the allegation regarding the existence of the said e-mail true?
ii) If so, does that e-mail still exist in the company archives? If so, can it be published on the website?
iii) If not, has that e-mail been deleted?
iv) If it is deleted, is it legal to delete such an important mail? If deleted, has the investigation found out who authorised the deletion of that e-mail from Infosys archives and has the company held that person accountable?
v) Has the latest report provided data to refute the whistle-blower’s contention that the then auditors (KPMG), Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (CAM) and Latham Watkins (LW) were complicit in the Rajiv Bansal and David Kennedy affairs?
vi) What is the date of the severance agreement with Mr. Bansal and when did the Chair of the Audit Committee, the Chair of the Remunerations Committee and the board come to know about this agreement? Will the company disclose the e-mail from Mr. Kennedy or the CEO to the Chair of the board to prove this date?
vii) If the e-mail from Mr. Kennedy does exist, did Mr. David Kennedy hide this agreement even from the board till the new CFO – Mr. M D Ranganath forced Mr. Kennedy to reveal it to the board? If he did hide it from the board, was it proper on the part of Mr. David Kennedy to do this?
viii. The whistle-blower contends that it was only due to the persuasion of the new CFO – Mr. M D Ranganath that the Remunerations Committee, the Audit Committee and the board approved the Rajiv Bansal transaction in January 2016. Is this true?
ix) Did GDC use any of the material provided by CAM and LW? If so, has the credibility of the GDC investigation been compromised since CAM and LW are themselves accused by the whistle-blower? How did the company ensure this?
x) Did any of the three reports unearth this e-mail and bring it to the notice of the board?
xi) The whistle-blower contends that CAM did not even speak to Mr. Bansal during the first investigation. Is this accusation true? If not, does the report include the record of Mr. Bansal’s version of the events? Which investigation team spoke to Mr. Bansal and when did it speak to Mr. Bansal?
xii) If this e-mail did indeed exist, has the investigation found out why the Legal Counsel was hiding this important agreement even from the board, the Remunerations Committee, and the Audit Committee?

04) According to the deliberations of the AGM 2016, the Chair of the board is supposed to have justified the severance amount paid to Mr. Bansal by announcing at the AGM that Mr. Bansal had some special competitive data. General belief among investors is that the Chair implied that no former key management personnel of Infosys including two former CFOs and several former executive directors had such special competitive data as Mr. Bansal is supposed to have had (since these former key management personnel of Infosys did not get such a favourable severance agreement). Have the three reports documented what type of special competitive data Mr. Bansal had? When will the shareholders be provided this information?

05) The whistle-blower contends that the Chair of the board was part of the secret decision to pay Mr. Bansal such a huge amount right in October 2015 and that he misled the shareholders at the AGM 2016. Has the GDC report investigated this allegation and cleared the Chair?

06) If the e-mail referred to in 03 does exist, given that Mr. David Kennedy hid an important and unusual severance payment agreement with the former CFO between October 2015 and January 2016, what action was taken against him? Is hiding critical information even from the incoming CFO who signs the SOX statement a part of the General Counsel’s duty at Infosys since the date the founders left the company voluntarily? If not, why was not Mr. David Kennedy asked to leave the company in January itself? Why was this decision delayed till he resigned on his own in December 2016, nearly a year later? Why was a special severance agreement worked out with Mr. David Kennedy who is supposed to have hidden an important agreement from the board and the from new CFO (who had to make a provision for any such payment) till he was forced to disclose it to the board by the new CFO? Has the culture of the company changed (since the founders left) to reward people who hide information from the board?

07) Did the GDC report justify a separate severance agreement to pay nearly one million dollars made with Mr. David Kennedy when he resigned even though there was already an employment contract? Why was a special 12–month severance allowed for Mr. David Kennedy when the norm was just 3 months in the company? If the e-mail from Mr. Kennedy to the CEO did indeed exist, should Mr. Kennedy not have been dismissed without any severance since he committed a big mistake by hiding information from the board? This severance agreement becomes very crucial in view of the e-mail from him to the CEO as mentioned in point 03.

08) Finally, what is the accountability of the Chair of the board, the Chair of the Remunerations Committee and the Chair of the Audit Committee for being responsible for these governance deficits?

Best regards,
Narayana Murthy
nmurthy@catamaranventures.com

Source:

infosys.com/newsroom/press-releases/Pages/company-statement-18august2017.aspx
thehindu.com/incoming/full-text-of-narayana-murthys-aug-14-letter-slamming-infosys-board/article19518713.ece

Vishal Sikka (MD & CEO) quits Infosys

Vishal Sikka resigned as MD and CEO of Infosys on 2017-08-18.
Below if the full text of Sikka's Resignation letter.
Followed by the full text of the Letter that Sikka wrote to Infy's employees.

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Resignation letter

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Over the last few days, since our earlier call, I’ve met Sesh several times, talked to you individually at length, and spent time thinking things thru with Vandana. During this time, one of our employees, Sandeep Karamongikar, died in his sleep, likely of a massive heart attack. He was working on the chatbot frontend in Nia. Also over the weekend, in possibly the greatest demonstration of AI capability ever, a bot built by the researchers at OpenAI (yes, that OpenAI), defeated the world’s best players of DOTA2, a multiplayer online video game, a game where the bot learned to play entirely from scratch. Further demonstrating that the force to automate routine, even advanced, activities is an unstoppable and exponential one. And the Charlottesville incident here in the US demonstrated once again the power of words and silences to cause real damage, or to heal.

After much reflection, I have concluded that it is indeed time for me to leave my current positions as MD and CEO, and I have communicated my resignation to Sesh. I will be working closely with Sesh, Ravi, Pravin, with all of you, and the senior management team to plan out the details and the timelines to ensure a smooth transition and in the meantime, continue our work without disruption, and ensuring that we protect our company, the employees, the clients, and the interests of every shareholder. You can count on my commitment to this.

I came here to help navigate the company through what I saw as a massive transformation opportunity, to transform our company and restore strong profitable growth, as well as help transform the business of our customers. I came to do this with the power of technology, given my experiences with similar transformations, my background in AI, and the structural changes that I saw happening in the IT services industry. This needed new skills, new thinking, new initiatives, and a transformation in the culture, from a cost-oriented value delivery, to entrepreneurship oriented value delivery. You have heard me articulate this many times before.

This type of a transformation has always been a passion for me, indeed I took this job for this reason. We have achieved much in the last 3+ years, and for sure we can all be proud of the powerful seeds of transformation that have already been sowed. No one anticipated the additional headwinds like the geo-political disruptions (Brexit, Trump, visa etc.) that made this transformation even more challenging, but also rewarding. But, the distractions that we have seen, the constant drumbeat of the same issues over and over again, while ignoring and undermining the good work that has been done, take the excitement and passion out of this amazing journey. Over the last many months and quarters, we have all been besieged by false, baseless, malicious and increasingly personal attacks. Allegations that have been repeatedly proven false and baseless by multiple, independent investigations. But despite this, the attacks continue, and worse still, amplified by the very people from whom we all expected the most steadfast support in this great transformation. This continuous drumbeat of distractions and negativity over the last several months/quarters, inhibits our ability to make positive change and stay focused on value creation. Addressing the noise by itself is damaging; hundreds of hours of my own time has gone into this recently. But the structural challenges this engenders within the organization, has a very damaging effect on our ability to carry out any kind of a transformation, especially one that is as fundamental as transforming from a cost-oriented to an innovationoriented value delivery to clients.

Therefore, I have come to this moment and the end of this journey. I hope that it gives everyone a chance to reflect, and give the transformation effort another big push and move the company forward rapidly to build its future, to build upon the foundation that we have laid over these past 3 years. If these types of attacks continue, I hope each of you will continue to be the voice of fairness and reason – providing the active, emphatic and unequivocal support that the company, the management, the employees, and all of the stakeholders and friends of the company need in order to succeed. Since the board deeply believes in the cause we have started, I will be happy to support all of you to achieve a smooth transition, and serve as your Executive Vice Chair as discussed.

I would like to thank each one of you, my dear colleagues, my friends and mentors, and look forward to working with you to close this chapter and open a great new one for all of us.

Best, V

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Letter to Employees of Infosys

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Dear Friends,

After a lot of reflection, I have resigned from my position as your MD & CEO effective today.  A succession process has been initiated, with Pravin serving as interim MD & CEO, and I will work closely with the Board and management team over the next few months to ensure a smooth transition. In addition, I have agreed to serve as Executive Vice Chairman on the Board to further ensure continuity until the new management is in place.

For days, indeed weeks, this decision has weighed on me. I have wrestled the pros and cons, the issues and the counterbalancing arguments. But now, after much thought, and considering the environment of the last few quarters, I am clear in my decision. It is clear to me that despite our successes over the last three years, and the powerful seeds of innovation that we have sown, I cannot carry out my job as CEO and continue to create value, while also constantly defending against unrelenting, baseless/malicious and increasingly personal attacks.

In 2014, we started with a very challenging set of conditions, and in the last three years, we have decisively turned things around.

Three years ago, I started this journey with a calling, to help reshape the company around innovation and entrepreneurship, to deliver breakthrough value for clients, and to help elevate our work, our standing, our selves, on the basis of a dual strategy, bringing together dualities of renew and new, automation and innovation, people and software, to show a new path forward in a time of unprecedented disruption within the industry and beyond. That time, around and before June 2014, was a difficult time. Our growth rates were low and attrition was high. There was a sense of apprehension all around and I came here to help enable a great transformation as our core business faced intense pricing pressure, and clients looked increasingly to innovative partners to help shape their digital futures. Now, a bit more than three years later, I am happy to see the company doing better in every dimension I can think of.

We have grown our revenues, from $2.13B in Q1FY15 to $2.65B this past Q1. We did so while keeping a strong focus on margins, closing this past quarter at 24.1% operating margin, beating some competitors for the first time in many years, and improving against most in our industry.  Perhaps more importantly, our revenue per employee has grown for six quarters in a row. Our attrition has fallen, from 23.4% in Q1FY15 to 16.9% this past Q1, and high performer attrition is hovering at or below the single-digit threshold for a while now.  We grew our $100M+ clients from 12 when I started, to 19, and increased our large deal wins from ~$1.9B in FY15 to ~$3.5B this past year. We’ve done all this while improving our overall utilization, to a 10-yr high this past quarter, and an all time high including trainees, while improving our cash reserves, rewarding employees with a new equity plan, and returning cash to our stakeholders. And we have done all this while improving our standing with clients to the highest ever in the 12 years since we’ve done our client satisfaction survey, and a jump of 22 points in CxO satisfaction.

A few days ago, Nitesh, Radha, and I met a client in our office in Palo Alto. It is one of the largest companies in the world - and the CIO was excited and proud about seeing automation come to life in their landscape.  Her reaction to seeing many of our innovation projects, as well as our workspace itself, was thoroughly rewarding, and a testament to all we have achieved. She requested us to bring our innovative work and processes to everything we do with her team in a similar space, and even that we help them establish a similar presence for their company in the valley!  This is a sentiment I’ve often heard from clients who’ve visited our 12,000 sqft space here, that has seen 2200 visits over its ~27 months; clients where we saw much faster than average revenue growth following their visits. So, as I look back on the three years as CEO, what brings me the most joy is the new roads that all of you have traveled, the new frontiers that all of you have enabled.  From embracing the new ideas in education, teaching ourselves Design Thinking like no one else ever has, learning AI, new development processes, and more, to applying these learnings via Zero Distance, a one-of-a-kind program of massive grassroots innovation, powered by education, by the amazing Zero Bench, and by your creative confidence.  With 16500+ ideas generated, 2200+ of which have already been implemented, ZD is proof that innovation need not be the domain of a chosen few in some elite department, but is the prerogative of us all; proof that the extraordinary within each one of us can indeed be unleashed. To complement this grassroots innovation, we’ve launched 25+ new services that contributed 8.3% of our revenue last quarter, up from zero in April 2015.  And our own new software business is now at 1.6% of revenue.  Our AI platform, Nia, now with 160+ scenarios deployed at more than 70 clients, is helping drive both automation within the company, and breakthrough new business scenarios outside.  Beyond new services and new software, we’ve ventured into new horizons, from our startup fund’s investments in promising new businesses, to the work we’ve done in the last 3 years in local hiring around the world, especially in the US, to the exemplary and inspiring work our US foundation has done in bringing computer science education and a culture of making, to the masses.

And I am proud of how we have upheld our values, our culture, our integrity, whilst we have gone about this massive transformation.  I am proud of how our Board has worked, tirelessly, selflessly, these past quarters, despite intense, unfair, and often malicious and personal, criticism, in not only upholding our standards of governance and integrity, but also indeed raising these.  None of our successes would be worthwhile for a moment, if this was not the case.

I was, and remain, passionate about the massive transformation opportunity for this company and industry, but we all need to allow the company to move beyond the noise and distractions.

Back in May 2014, when I first met many board colleagues, I thought of the road ahead as a road for the next 33 years of this iconic company. For Infosys is more than a company: it is an idea, a dream, a pioneering possibility.  Back then I thought, just as I do today, that the time ahead called for a company that could show the way to a digital future, a future where our humanity, amplified by automation and software, would unleash our creativity, our imagination, to construct great worlds of our futures, and would do so powered by education, by our timeless value of learnability.  Such an Infosys, whilst staying true to its core, to her values and timeless principles, would shine the light in an altogether different context, a different reality. Such an Infosys would be one where an individual’s entrepreneurship, ability to imagine and create, ability to learn, and to amplify themselves with software, with AI, would create a greater whole. Rather than an overarching system enabling the people, the people’s agility and imagination would create a greater system. Three years later, we can clearly see that the seeds of this idea have taken root and are growing, into beautiful new flowers and plants, and I see no reason why these cannot continue, and help shape our company’s future.

For sure this journey has been a difficult one.  No one, especially me, thought it would be easy.  Transformations are hard to begin with.  A massive transformation, of such an iconic institution, with such groundbreaking achievements behind her, would be even tougher, and the exponential rates of change all around us, further amplified by geopolitical matters, would add that much more headwind.  But all this was known, and clear, and in many ways added to the calling that I felt.  For as the legendary architect Daniel Burnham said, “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir man’s blood.”

But after much contemplation I have decided to leave because the distractions, the very public noise around us, have created an untenable atmosphere. I deeply believe in creating value in an atmosphere of freedom, trust and empowerment. Life is too short to engage in battles of opinions in the public, these add no value, take critical time and focus away from the business, and indeed add more to the noise, to the eardrum buzz, as I wrote to you a few months ago. The founding principle of the strategy I laid out for our renewal was personal empowerment, working in an entrepreneurial environment.  I need this for my own work as well.  Steve Jobs, in his famous commencement speech at my alma mater, said:

“Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other opinions drown your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become.”

I now need to move forward, and return to an environment of respect, trust and empowerment, where I can take on new lofty challenges, as can each of you.

As Steve Jobs said, I must follow my heart and my intuition, build my buildings, give my givings, and do something else.  Over the next weeks and months, I look forward to working with the Board and management to create a smooth transition, and simultaneously staring into the great unknown, and to doing something great, something purposeful, for the times ahead.    And also to spend some time with my loved ones.  I’ve been away from home far too often and far too long.

As I completed my three years recently, many people asked me if I have any regrets.  This question is more apt today and the answer is a clear NO. Not for a second.  However difficult the noise of the last several months has been, I wouldn’t trade our time together for anything. I would not give up the experience of seeing the gleam in your eyes as you described a new idea, invention, or contribution. You worked on these confidently, without reward, without arrogance, showing exactly the kind of creative confidence that David Kelley talked about in Design Thinking – a wonderful thing to witness.

I am deeply grateful for the immense support and love I’ve received from all of you, from our worthy clients for whom we do our life’s work, and by our shareholders across the globe.  I am grateful for your trust, confidence and friendship, and am thankful to our team of amazing leaders, who will help lead our company to greatness.  To my first Infoscion colleague and trusted friend Ranga, who enabled us to achieve the things we achieved, to the amazing Ravi, a pocket of passion and energy and execution excellence, to the calm and steadfast Mohit, who introduced me to the band of brothers and lived it, day after day, to the larger than life Rajesh, with his great heart and big laugh, to Binod, a veritable bulldozer brother with his broad shoulders and broader smile, to the one of a kind Ramadas, the architect and protector of our magnificent campuses with his indomitable spirit and world-class excellence, to the always smiling Deepak who helped live the strategy, to Krish and the best HR team in the world, especially the extraordinary Richard, Nanju, Shruthi and their amazing team for helping to carry out some of the craziest and most amazing people initiatives, to Inderpreet, a new voice to the team, a voice of calm, strength, integrity and a stability that far belies the little time she’s been with us, to Jayesh and our entire finance team for their dedication, their impeccable meticulous integrity and world-class excellence, and especially to my partner, friend, and pillar of strength, Pravin, who carried all the load in the world, with a smile, impeccable integrity and the most amazing grace, and will now lead you to the next phase of our company's growth.  To Zaiba, Bala sir, Nagaraju, Hari and many others for making it possible for me to be me and to do my work, to my Palo Alto family: Sanjay, Abdul, Navin, Ritika, Barbara, Tao, Vinod, Shabana, April, Sudhir and others who have stood by me and have given up so much to be a part of this journey and contributed so much to it, and indeed to thousands of Infoscions who’ve made it all matter.  I am thankful to Sesh and our entire board for their unfailing support and confidence in me throughout this journey.

Together we have achieved a lot.  Even in the midst of all of the distractions, even as the tendency was to return to the familiar, we still managed to persevere and make wonderful progress. We have laid the foundation for the next 30 years of Infosys, and I feel deeply proud to have worked alongside all of you in sowing the seeds that will return this company to the bellwether it once was.  As you’ve all often reminded us, Infosys is no bigger and no smaller than any of us, the people, the Infoscions.  You are the ones that will take Infosys to the next 30 years and beyond.  As I think about the time ahead, for all of us, I can only see us powered by a freedom from the known, of renewing ourselves to thrive in the time ahead. Each one of you has vindicated my deeply held belief that people are capable of doing more, achieving more, being more, than they ever imagined possible. So, keep pushing yourself to do better at whatever you are good at, but also learning to do things you have never done before, indeed, nobody has ever done before. I know I will be doing the same.

The Board, Pravin, and I will communicate additional details as we move forward in this transition, and meanwhile, we continue our work as is. I wish all of you the very best in your journeys ahead.

V

Source:

http://indianexpress.com/article/business/full-text-vishal-sikkas-resignation-letter-as-ceo-and-md-of-infosys-4802073/

http://vishalsikka.blogspot.in/2017/08/moving-on.html