Thursday, June 30 2005 09:36 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Bangalore: Software major Wipro's high-profile vice-chairman Vivek Paul has quit the firm and switched over to technology and life sciences space by becoming a partner at the Texas Pacific Group, a leading private investment firm.

Announcing the moving over of Paul to "play a significant role in the technology and life sciences space", Wipro also announced a new organisation structure for the country's third largest software services exporter.

Dr Lakshman Rao has been appointed the Chief Operating Officer (COO), the company said in a statement in Bangalore.

Speculations about the exit of US-based Paul from Wipro to play a new role, has been rife in the IT circles for the last few days.

Commenting on the changes, Wipro Chairman Azim Premji said that Paul's contribution to the success of the firm's global IT business has been significant, reflected in the company's lead position today in many areas - Research and Development (R&D) services, IT outsourcing and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO).

"Vivek has groomed a set of global leaders who can take over from him and continue to build on this foundation," he said.

Wipro also announced that Sudip Banerjee, president, would lead the Enterprise Business and Girish Paranjpe, also president, would lead the Banking and Financial Services Business.

Suresh Vaswani, president, would continue to lead the India and Asia Pacific business along with his leadership of the key technology expertise horizontals of Technology Infrastructure Services and Testing globally. T K Kurien would continue to lead Wipro's BPO business, the statement said.