MUMBAI: Infosys BSE 0.15 % has borrowed a leaf from rival Tata Consultancy Services BSE -1.09 %’ playbook by deciding to split its business into smaller units, which will be managed by the company’s next rung of management.

Since he took over as CEO two years ago, Vishal Sikka has weathered a bunch of management exits, the latest of which was that of Manish Tandon – who was in charge of healthcare, insurance and life sciences. The Bengaluru-based company responded by concentrating responsibility in the hands of its presidents, – a move that was questioned by analysts.

“Infosys has just three members of its management team ultimately responsible for all the verticals among themselves (all the three are presidents) vs eight vertical heads at TCS,” Viju George, analyst with JPMorgan, said in a note dated August 18.

Last Friday, Sikka said he was breaking up the company into smaller, more autonomous units with PNL (profit and loss) responsibilities, something that TCS had done seven years ago when N Chandrasekaran had taken over as CEO.

“It gives us scalability, it gives us isolation and accountability of individuals,” Sikka told analysts at its analyst event in Pune. The smaller units, with revenues between $500 million and $700 million each, could have anywhere from a handful to a couple of dozen clients—structure that would give Sikka and his presidents the ability to zoom in on the particular needs of a particular cluster of clients.

Infosys declined to specify the number of units the company would be split into or discuss the names of the next generation of leaders.

IT consultancy HfS’ CEO Phil Fersht told ET that breaking divisions into smaller units would help in better coordination for deal pursuits but that the company would also need a consistent set of policies for pricing, outcome definition and key metrics.

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