Silly to say Punita Kumar Sinha’s appointment to Infosys board is nepotism

January 14, 2016, NewsCrunch

The appointment of Punita Kumar Sinha, wife of Union Minister Jayant Sinha, as an independent director on Infosys Board has drawn criticism.

An independent director of Infosys earns Rs 1 crore annually in sitting fee and other remuneration.

Punita’s surprise appointment at Infosys was quickly seen as nepotism and a smart move to gain government favours. Both the arguments are silly.

Infosys has tried hard, but gets less than 3% of its revenue from Indian market. No amount of government favour is going to help it increase its domestic business, which remains complex and unappetising.

Infosys also does not need to reach out to Indian government to lobby for any policy shift.  There is Nasscom for that, India’s most successful trade body.

Punita does not need any nepotism to get on to the Infosys board. Before starting her own investment advisory firm ‘Pacific Paradigm Advisers’, she was a Senior Managing Director of Blackstone Group and Chief Investment Officer of Blackstone Asia Advisors. 

In that role, she handled billions of dollars in fund management.

She has been featured by The Financial Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, Forbes, Fox News, Bloomberg and other international publications which would give two hoots about her family connections.

Punita is a chemical engineer from IIT Delhi, who successfully switched to finance as she felt that in the 1980s technical jobs were biased against women.

She got a Masters in Finance from the elite WhartonSchooland later a doctorate as well from the same school.

However, Punita has been in controversy earlier also.

In 2000, when her father-in-law Yashwant Sinha was finance minister, he went easy on foreign institutional investors over a double taxation issue.

His political opponents had claimed that he had taken the stand to benefit   Punita though nothing came of the allegation.