After Wipro sues two former senior executives for joining Cognizant, Infosys sends letter

It seems to be full blown

poaching wars

at Indian IT giants. Just days after Indian IT major

Wipro

sued two of its senior executives for joining Cognizant, rival IT giant

Infosys

too has made a kinda similar move. The country’s second largest IT services firm Infosys has reported to have accused Cognizant of using “unethical poaching tactics” after several of its executives quit to join the Nasdaq-listed firm.
According to a report in MoneyControl.com, Infosys had sent a written communication to Cognizant after a few of its senior leaders departed to join the company.

The report quotes three sources said to be aware of the matter. "Non-compete clauses are not enforceable but this communication to Cognizant was more of a deterrent", one of the sources cited reportedly said.
The long list
Since taking charge in January this year, an Infosys veteran and now Cognizant CEO

Ravi Kumar

has hired over twenty executive vice presidents and four senior vice presidents. Many of these are from Wipro and Infosys. In the past 12 months, Infosys and Wipro have cumulatively lost more than 15 senior-level executives to major rival companies.

The key executives that Cognizant hired from Infosys include Anurag Vardhan Sinha, Nageswar Cherukupalli, Narsimha Rao Mannepalli and Shweta Arora. While the first two have already joined Cognizant, the latter two were reportedly tipped to join as head of delivery and head of consulting. However, Infosys' move to send a missive may have delayed those plans, according to one of the sources cited above.
Wipro has now filed suits in the US and India against two of its former executives- Mohd Haque and Jatin Dalal- who joined Cognizant recently. Besides losing its veteran CFO Dalal, Wipro lost its chief growth officer Stephanie Trautman, leading the IT major to dissolve its large deals growth office into strategic market units to be headed directly by chief executive Thierry Delaporte.

Talking about Dalal’s exit in an interview with ET in October, Delaporte had stated that he wanted “to develop communication with a new approach, with a generation who will lead Wipro for the next years”.