Mumbai: L Kiran Karnik has decided to step down from his role as president, Nasscom and a search process has been initiated for a successor.

Karnik turned 60 this year and took the decision in keeping with Nasscom''s aim to become institutionalised through appropriate structures, systems and processes for which well-defined HR policies have been laid down. These include a retirement age of 60 years.

Karnik took over the industry body after the sudden demise of Dewang Mehta in 2001.

The search effort is under the overall leadership of Harish Mehta, former chairman of Nasscom and chairman of Onward Technologies, with the involvement of Karnik and senior industry leaders.

Karnik is expected to stay on for around 6-8 months before his successor takes over and later step into an advisory role. Under Karnik''s leadership, the IT-ITeS industry registered strong growth, with a 10-fold growth in the last 10 years. It is already India''s top exporter, and well on track to achieve the target of $60 billion exports in 2010.

Nasscom has meanwhile announced the appointment of Lakshmi Narayan, who is the vice chairman on the board of directors of Cognizant Technology Solutions, as Nasscom chairman and Ganesh Natarajan, deputy chairman and MD, Zensar Technologies as vice-chairman for 2007-08.