John Gikopoulos to head AI and Automation consulting at Infosys
In line with its overall shift in focus towards digital services, Indian IT services and consulting firm Infosys has appointed a new Global Head for its automation and artificial intelligence (AI) consulting division in the form of John Gikopoulos, a former Partner at management consultancy McKinsey & Company.
Earlier this year, Infosys CEO Salil Parekh revealed that the firm was reorienting its operations to place greater emphasis on digital services, to be achieved through a three-year strategy. The first year (up until 2019) will be spent in attaining a basic degree of stability under Parekh, who only took the reins at the start of this year.
Thereafter, the next two years will be spent building momentum and accelerating in the areas most relevant to the contemporary IT consulting arena, which includes services in the automation and AI segments. The firm has now bolstered its operations in these domains through the appointment of a new global head.
John Gikopoulos represents one of the first, and possibly only, external recruitments made by Parekh, given the latter’s belief that the current leadership at Infosys was strong and more than sufficient to take the company forward. Parekh’s deviation from this stance indicates the importance of the AI and automation domains.
Gikopoulos holds a degree in engineering from the University of Manchester, and well over a decade of experience at global management consultancy McKinsey & Company. He joined McKinsey as an Engagement Manager, and worked his way up the ranks through Associate Principal to eventually become a Partner in 2012.
In 2016, he left McKinsey to join tech firm IPsoft, where he was responsible for the establishment of its Cognitive Intelligence Europe unit. The unit hosts more than 100 employees, and offers solutions in the AI domain to clients headquartered in Europe. He was first the Director and subsequently the Managing Director at Cognitive Intelligence Europe.
Gikopoulos now joins Infosys as Partner and Global Head of the AI & Automation consulting division, and will continue to be based in Europe. While Gikopoulos works on devising AI-based solutions, Infosys has promoted Hasit Trivedi – a senior executive with over two decades at Infosys – to the position of Global Head for AI & Automation Service Delivery, wherein he will support Gikopoulos with the delivery side of things.
Given his base in Europe, Gikopoulos offers the firm the added benefit of supporting its European expansion – an increasingly significant part of its global strategy. Parekh commented on this, saying, “We see a lot of growth in some European countries like Germany and the Nordic countries, so we want to build an organisational structure that supports that sort of goal.”
