Infosys board director Mohandas Pai in Bangalore on Friday. (PTI)

Bangalore, April 15: Infosys, the $6-billion software giant, is going through its biggest top-level shake-up. T.V. Mohandas Pai, the director who oversaw human resource at 1.3 lakh-strong Bangalore-based giant, stunned the markets and the software industry today by announcing his plans to resign from the company.

Pai will step down on June 11 after the shareholders’ meeting.

In a related move, Microsoft India’s former chairman Ravi Venkatesan is being inducted into the board.

Pai’s shock exit — the second top-rung official to leave after former MD Nandan Nilekani left to oversee the government’s mammoth unique ID card programme — has smoothened the way for S.D. Shibulal to take over as the chief executive officer when Kris Gopalakrishnan steps down.

The company said it would announce its plans on April 30. Many had thought that Pai would be in the race for the CEO’s post.

Infosys chairman and chief mentor N.R. Narayana Murthy, who is due to step down as chairman in August, said Pai’s resignation had been accepted. “We know he has taken a painful decision since he has much bigger projects on the horizon — nation building,” Murthy added. Neither Murthy nor Pai explained what the “nation-building” plans were.

Pai said he was stepping down as he had no “unfulfilled ambitions left” and wanted to give younger people within the organisation a shot at leadership positions.

But Pai isn’t the only one to go: K. Dinesh, one of the founders of Infosys, is retiring as a director and will not be seeking renomination.

The shock announcement came on the same day that the company announced a dismal set of numbers in the fourth quarter ended March 31 that sent its stock skidding 10 per cent on the BSE, sparking worries about the performance of the entire software pack in the critical January-March quarter.

Pai said Murthy and the board tried to retain him but he decided to call it quits.