It's a tough time to be a corporate executive. Today's leaders-who amongst them include trailblazing youngsters at the helm of exciting start-ups to tenured experts who worked their way up from the lowest rungs of the corporate ladder-face a myriad of challenges amidst an unsettled environment.
Changing customer preferences, convergence across industries, and digital transformation have all been adding to the uncertainty in the business landscape over the course of the last two decades.
If there's one person who understands this better than anyone else, it's Indian business magnate Phaneesh Murthy, who in 2013 founded specialist consultancy firm Primentor Inc. to help mentor senior executives of large organizations "to create shareholder value by enhancing business agility in an uncertain environment".
What is Primentor Inc.?
Primentor is Phaneesh Murthy's own consulting company through which he provides consultancy in areas including business strategy and restructuring. According to the Primentor website, the company creates shareholder value by advising organizations on specific challenges, including:
How to enhance business agility through the creation of value networks.
How to leverage technology and operations to maximize value from the business.
How to assess the impact of emerging technologies and prepare organizations to leverage them for a more connected and efficient value chain.
Given Phaneesh Murthy's extensive background in technology and his position as one of India's most well-regarded business executives and thought leaders, the bulk of Primentor's work comes from the technology sector.
One area that Primentor specializes in is tech & ops convergence for enhanced business value. Here, Murthy advises organizations that have found themselves slowing down and stalling as a result of their use of outdated legacy organizational and business structures that view technology and operations as disparate components rather than holistic ones.
Primentor's consultancy services help these organizations migrate to an integrated Technology & Operations (iTOPS) business model, which Murthy pioneered while leading iGATE in the mid-2000s, using a data-backed, yet consultative approach.
Who is Phaneesh Murthy?
Phaneesh Murthy has more than three decades of experience across the Global Technology and Business Services industry and has pioneered numerous business disruptions and competitive differentiators to drive organizational and industry growth.
As the Worldwide Head of Sales & Marketing and later as a Member of the Board of Directors at Infosys, Murthy led the company's Global Delivery Model, which was widely recognized as a game-changer in the industry at the time. His leadership is credited with Infosys's revenue growing multi-fold, to more than US$750 million in 2002.
Following his stint at Infosys, Murthy became the CEO of iGATE in 2003, a position he held until 2013. During his time at iGATE, he disrupted the market again by introducing the iTOPS model, which he leveraged to successfully drive the enterprise value of iGATE up to US$4.8 billion from US$70 million over a period of 11 years.
Phaneesh serves on the advisory board for Partners Group, a private equity fund. Since early 2014, Murthy has also served as an operating partner at New State Capital Partners LLC, where he is focused on business services, technology, and BPO-related opportunities.
Phaneesh Murthy's charitable contributions
Phaneesh Murthy, who holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, is also an active philanthropist. He founded the Kabini Foundation in the mid-2000s, which is a non-profit dedicated to the conservation of the Kabini jungle system, a major tiger habitat that stretches across India along the Kabini River.
Recently, Murthy donated state-of-the-art Q4i thermal drone technology to the Nagarahole Tiger Reserve, at a cost of Rs 2.1 millio. Capable of flying in any weather and capturing photo and video during day and night-time conditions, the drone covers a forest area of 4km and can fly for 40 minutes on a single charge. Murthy has also donated 900 tracking cameras which have been strategically deployed in various places throughout the reserve.
Thanks to the Kabini Foundation and the work of conservationists throughout India, the country's tiger population has increased from a low of around 1,400 in 2006 to around 3, 000 in 2022.
In a recent interview, Murthy explained that it was the Indian tiger population of the mid-2000s that inspired him to begin his conservational work. "... for those of us who have seen these magnificent animals in the wild, we wanted to make sure that our children would be able to see them too," he said.
Phaneesh Murthy is currently based out of San Francisco, California, where he lives with his family.
