What is General Electric’s  (GE) biggest contribution to the US economy? Some say it is the aircraft engines and some say it is the wind turbines. Both are right in their own sense. Many overlook the fact that GE’s biggest export has been its CEOs. There is folklore on how Jack Welch, GE’s former CEO, selected his successor.

Jeffrey R. Immelt was chosen as the successor to Welch in a well thought-out process. When Immelt was selected as GE’s CEO, two other candidates were also in the running. It was everybody’s understanding that the other two candidates will go run their own show, which they did. Robert Nardelli went on to run Home Depot. James McNerney went on to run 3M and later Boeing. Similarly many GE executives went on to become CEOs of fortune 500 companies.

A similar thing is shaping up in India Inc which is plagued with family run businesses and nepotism. Indian business houses never seem to have a strong succession plan. ICICI bank has followed a GEish process of selecting KV Kamath’s successor. Yet another company is showing similar signs. Infosys, India’s entrepreneurial success story, is shaping up as a brand new leadership school. Four ex-Infoscions have found their way to head public offices and other companies. Some by design and some by default. Nandan Nilekani, Narayana Murthy, Phaneesh Murthy and Mohandas Pai are the four Infoscions who are leading separate efforts but all have the common thread of working at Infosys.

Nandan Nilekani: One of the founding members who held the position of CEO and has come out of Infosys to lead a massive eGovernance effort of Unique ID project (Aadhaar) for the Indian government. In a never-done before-exercise of collecting identity information of India’s 1.2 billion population, Nandan Nilekani has spearheaded the project Aadhar and has delivered the first Aadhar cards within 12 months of the project’s inception, as promised.

Narayana Murthy: After the end of his stint with Infosys, Narayana Murthy has  started his own fund to fund startups, providing leadership without a title.  Beyond the fund, government has shown great interest to use Narayana Murthy’s expertise. Infosys’s long-time CEO and mentor, has accepted the position of Chief Mentor with West Bengal government and is in the process of turning West Bengal into an IT hub.

Mohandas Pai: While Nandan Nilekani and Narayana Murthy have had their terms as CEOs, Mohandas Pai did not have one. There is a rumor that Mr. Pai was expecting the CEO position which later went to KV Kamath. After which, Mr Pai has resigned from Infosys and went to start his own $100 million fund to encourage promising Indian startups. Money begets money and investing is all about making more money, but investing in start-ups is the most risky and often rewarding way of doing it. Yet Mohandas Pai has chosen to do just that to keep up the entrepreneurial spirits high in the country.

Phaneesh Murthy: Now this is a tricky one. The movie, Guru was loosely based on Dhirubhai Ambani’s story. Phaneesh Murthy’s story would be even more compelling to watch on the silver screen. It has all the ingredients: An ambitious employee who was  knocking on the CEO post, a sex scandal, the exit, a resurrection by becoming the CEO of another IT company. Phaneesh Murthy was with Infosys for 10 years when a sex scandal broke out which was later settled out of the court. Murthy later became the CEO of iGate, which acquired Patni to become iGate-Patni. The new company under Phaneesh Murthy is in direct competition with Infosys. A classic story, but the common Infosys thread and the path to leadership is hard to ignore.

There you have, the four ex-infoscions who went to manage their own shows or are part of  a greater objective. A troika of IIT-IIM-US experience is the basic ingredient for being the CEO of any company in India. That’s now beginning to change as we have one more ingredient added to the troika – an Infosys experience.

Is Infosys churning out more leaders than any other company in India?