Athira Sethu
Kochi, 29 Sep 2026
Coforge Ltd, an IT services company, has named Akhil Kumar Gupta as the new chairperson and non-executive independent director at the company. Earlier, Gupta was the vice-chairman of Bharti Enterprises.
The appointment will be for five years and has taken effect from Tuesday.
The new appointment at Coforge comes after a series of developments and conflicts within the board of Coforge. The entire episode started when O P Bhatt, a senior banker, quit his position as the chairman of Coforge on September 9.
Bhatt quit the company following an internal audit of the company which had pointed out problems related to the board evaluation report of the company. According to the report, the performance of Bhatt as the chairman received the lowest rating and he did not disclose it to the board members.
Resignation of Bhatt caused a sharp dip in the shares of Coforge. On the announcement of his resignation, the shares of the company went down more than 5%. It brought down the value of Coforge by more than ₹4,400 crore.
This problem got worse when D K Singh, who was the chairperson of Nomination and Remuneration Committee (NRC) of Coforge, too quit.
According to Singh, there were tensions between the independent directors and the executive directors. The independent directors refer to board members who have no direct connection with the management of the company while the executive directors refer to those who have a more direct involvement in managing the organization.
Following these two resignations, Coforge introduced a few temporary changes to its leadership.
Firstly, the company named Vivek Sharma, who was a non-executive independent director, as the interim chairperson. In this position, Sharma was supposed to take over the chairperson duties until a new one was appointed.
Secondly, the company hired Egon Zehnder, which is a global executive search firm, to identify new leaders for the company.
Thirdly, the new appointment of Akhil Kumar Gupta offers Coforge with a new permanent chairperson. Gupta has prior experience in business leadership owing to his past experiences at Bharti Enterprises.
Akhil Kumar Gupta will be serving as a chairperson and non-executive independent director for the next five years.
The current appointment could not come at a better time than the present considering the situation Coforge is currently facing.
