Banerji (Picture: Subhabrata Das/BusinessWorld)

Mumbai, Jan. 21: Shumeet Banerji, the London-based chief executive of consultancy Booz & Co, was today appointed an independent director at Hewlett-Packard as a wave of management upheavals rocked the digital world.

Indian infotech giant Wipro and search-engine colossus Google also saw the appointment of new chief executives. Larry Page, one of the prodigies who co-founded Google will replace Eric Schmidt, a technology veteran brought in as the company’s “adult supervision” a decade ago.

Banerji and three others, including former e-Bay CEO Meg Whitman, were named directors of HP in an attempt to head off criticism over the way HP handled the departure of CEO Mark Hurd last year.

Banerji, 51, graduated from St Stephen’s College, Delhi, before going on to acquire an MBA degree from Delhi University. He later earned a Ph.D from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.

He joined management consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton in 1992 after leaving his position as professor of marketing at the University of Chicago’s graduate business school.

The 94-year-old consultancy was carved up into two entities in 2008 — and Banerji was named the first CEO of Booz and Co.

In the late 1990s, Banerji had moved to Mumbai where he opened the Booz Alan Hamilton practice, which shut down soon after. It was reopened after the consultancy split.

Banerji joins another Indian — Rajiv L. Gupta, a former CEO of speciality materials maker Rohm and Haas — as a board member of HP.

The world’s largest computer maker was established by two Stanford graduates —Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard — who started out in a Palo Alto garage in 1938 with a working capital of just $538.