Accenture ropes in Avinash Vashishtha as the head
Accenture India has appointed Avinash Vashishtha as Chairman & Country Managing Director to boost up the revenue in the booming Indian IT market. For some time now, Accenture, with a global revenues of nearly $24 billion, has been trailing behind IBM and HP in the domestic market and is all set to grab a larger share with Vashishtha's understanding of the local market.
Avinash Vashishtha, 49, is a doyen outsourcing professional and a turnaround expert. He will work with the current Chairman Harsh Manglik until he retires in August this year. Till then, Manglik, 62, and Vashishtha will serve as Co-Chairmen of the company's India operations.
Around mid-nineties, Vashishtha has helped Nortel by building its biggest offshore operations in India, which went bankrupt last year. He was also a customer for India's top outsourcing vendors including TCS, Infosys and Wipro .
Later, in 1999, he founded outsourcing advisory firm neoIT and advised customers such as Siemens , JP Morgan Chase, ABN Amro, Home Depot, and Stanford University on their offshoring strategies. Vashishtha is an engineering graduate from IIT-Kanpur, Master in Computer Science from the University of Alberta with over two decades of experience.
According to a research firm tracking the Indian IT market, IBM earns revenue almost $1.7-1.8 billion annually, compared with Accenture's $250 million. With EDS and Mphasis under its fold, HP makes around $700-800 million a year from the Indian market.