Bangalore-based Sonata Software on Tuesday said the company’s CEO and Managing Director Sanjay Viswanathan had resigned. Viswanathan was appointed the CEO and MD of the company in August 2011 after the resignation of B Ramaswamy. According to a release from the company the present Deputy Managing Director and COO of Sonata Srikar Reddy will replace Viswanathan as the chief executive. When contacted by Business Standard, Sanjay Viswanathan, said: “The reason for the resignation was personal and didn’t want to comment more on it. During my career, most part of the time I was in London. I have a couple of offers now. I need some time to finalise on it.”
On a query about his last day of service with the company, he said, “I have not finalised about my last day in Sonata.”
I want to make the transition a smooth one for Srikar. He is a good leader and with the team of around 3,000 people he can take the company to newer heights.”
Early in 2010 there were reports that promoters of the company is planning to exit from the venture and Mphasis and Oracle were in the race to buy the stake. However, the company had dismissed the reports. Presently, the promoters hold around 39.05 per cent of the company’s stake with Bhupati Investments Finance Pvt Ltd holding the biggest pie followed by Suman Raheja, Akshay Raheja among others.
Meanwhile, the company reported a net loss of around Rs 6.87 crore for the third quarter-ended December 31, 2011 while it had made a profit of Rs 19.28 crore in the corresponding quarter last year. It clocked revenues of Rs 526.25 crores for the October-December period, seeing a growth of 34 per cent over the corresponding quarter last year. The shares of the company on the BSE closed at Rs 23.45, a drop of 2.70 per cent.
The company had paid a one term payment of around Rs 4.3 crore as employee restructuring which relates to early retirement accrual cost of WI InfoTec GmbH, a company which they acquired in 2006 which affected their bottomline.