Basab Pradhan

Basab Pradhan was the Head of Sales, Client Services, Alliances and Marketing at Infosys. He was involved in opening the company's first sales office in the New York area in 1995. He is also the founder of financial research firm Gridstone Research where he was the CEO till March 2009.

On 9 July 2013 he announced via Twitter that he is leaving Infosys to go back to the startup world. At this point it is not clear if he is still an employee of Infosys.

Early life
Basab Pradhan was born in Cuttack, Orissa. He completed his school education from Campus School, Hisar in 1980. He was the school topper in Secondary School Examinations. He graduated from IIT Kanpur as an engineer in 1987 and did his MBA from IIM Ahmedabad in 1989.

Career
After completing his education, he joined Hindustan Unilever as an Area Sales Manager in 1989 but shifted to Infosys in 1994. He was involved in opening the company's first sales office in the New York area in 1995. Pradhan took over as Global Sales Head in July, 2002, when Phaneesh Murthy, the then Infosys director and global sales and marketing head, quit after being sued for sexual harassment by a former Infosys employee. During his leadership as the Head of Global Sales, the company grew from US$ 400 million to US$ 2 billion. He quit Infosys in 2005 together with some other Infoscians and founded financial research firm Gridstone Research where he was the CEO till March 2009. But he stepped down as CEO of Gridstone Research in 2009 and joined Infosys again.

Books
He has also co-authored a book on Indian Offshore Industry titled Offshore: How India Got Back On The Global Business Map with Gaurav Rastogi in 2011. The book was published by Penguin Books.

Personal life
He is married to Vidya Pradhan who is an editor in India Currents. He has one son and one daughter. He currently resides in Fremont, California. He is also a trustee on the board of Digjyoti, an educational trust that provides scholarships to needy students in the state of Orissa in India.