Wipro sues a former senior vice president who joined Cognizant

26 Dec 2023 , 01:59 PM

A former senior executive is the target of a complaint from Indian IT behemoth Wipro for allegedly breaking a non-compete agreement in his work contract. The complaint claims that this year the aforementioned executive joined Cognizant, a direct rival of Wipro.

According to Wipro’s lawsuit, Mohd Haque, who left the company in June of this year, consented to a number of limitations on his post-employment actions, including a ban on working for a select group of Wipro rivals, such as Cognizant, for a minimum of 12 months following the termination of his job.

Haque spent many years working in the digital healthcare services sector at Wipro, a market in which US-based Cognizant and Wipro are direct competitors. Haque began working for Wipro in Bengaluru in 2010 as a vice president (VP) of enterprise application services.

‘On or around August 1, 2023, Haque started breaking his non-competition agreements by working for one of these few forbidden organisations, Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation. Wipro alleged in the complaint that Haque ‘took every opportunity to conceal from Wipro his upcoming employment with Cognizant and gain an unfair advantage over Wipro upon joining.’

Additionally, according to Wipro’s complaint email, Haque uploaded and sent ‘seven files’ from his personal Gmail account on or around June 20, 2023, containing private information that the company’s IT staff had detected on June 22. Just before to his resignation taking effect, Haque secretly uploaded some Wipro files to his personal email account and sent them outside of Wipro. In addition, Haque repeatedly gave false information to Wipro, claiming that he had no intention of working at Cognizant, according to the complaint.

On September 29, 2023, Wipro’s legal representative allegedly sent Haque a letter reminding him of his contractual duties to Wipro and the repercussions for any violations.

According to the complaint submitted to a US court, Haque was entitled to more than $1 million in stock awards over a number of years following his elevation to the position of senior vice president (SVP) at Wipro and localization as a US employee. According to the terms of the agreement, Haque committed to ‘be liable to pay Wipro’ the value of public sector undertakings (PSUs) or American depositary shares (ADSs), as applicable. This value would be determined by multiplying the total number of PSUs or ADSs awarded by the share price on the date of the specific award.

Additionally, Wipro claimed in the complaint that Haque had neither reimbursed Wipro for the money he was paid during the final 12 months of his job, nor the worth of the ADS and PSU awards.

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