Infy cautious, but optimisitic about growth

BANGALORE, INDIA:  After posting better results in the second quarter than the preceding one, Infosys Limited chief executive officer and managing director S D Shibulal said on Wednesday that in its long-term objective, the tech major was moving from a country-centric approach to a client-centric one.

At the same time, he was quick to point out that the client preferences were changing predominantly due to the prevailing economic uncertainty.

“Clients are being very cautious and are increasingly scrutinizing the returns on their investments.”

He added that the macroeconomic environment continued to be uncertain and it should be a concern to the IT industry. “We also remain very, very cautious in our approach,” said Shibulal.

“In this scenario, clients are looking for new opportunities for growth, accelerated innovation and increased returns on investments,” said Shibulal, during the announcement of the company’s second quarter results and the first in his tenure as the CEO.

Chief financial officer V Balakrishnan, too, echoed Shibulal’s views, as he suggested that this year has been abnormal. “Generally, the third and the fourth quarters are considered soft quarters. But this year, even if clients had sufficient budgets, they are not spending much,” he explained.

“They are, in fact, spending evenly on all quarters. The spending is spread out unlike the previous years.”

Infosys 3.0 in place

Still, Infy’s optimism stems from its recent topline restructuring and its newly-adopted Infosys 3.0 strategy, which aims at transforming the erstwhile technology solutions company into a business solutions firm.

“Infosys 3.0 is fully in place and the realignment is complete,” said Shibulal.

The IT major has now realigned its focus on business operations, transformation and innovation. “Out of the 45 new clients we got in this quarter, 19 are from investment areas,” informed Shibulal, adding that they would promote engineering innovation centres in various emerging markets.

Infosys Limited has also reaffirmed its stand on future recruitments, with no slashing of the numbers.

“We have added 15,352 new employees this quarter and in the next, we will recruit another 8,000. As we said, we will fulfill our commitment of recruiting 45,000 people this year,” said Shibulal.

At present, the headcount of the company stands at 1,41,822. According to the CEO, the overall attrition was marginally down from 17.1 per cent in the corresponding quarter last year to 15.6 per cent in the last quarter - in absolute terms.

"In the US, one of Infy’s key markets, 86 per cent of our recruitments are visa-independent and 6.5 per cent of the overall recruits are non-Indians,” said Shibulal.

As for the speculation over its potential healthcare business deal with Thomson Reuters, he remarked in lighter vein, “We are dating, but not yet engaged. At times, the dating process extends for a long period, but we do intend to get to engaged soon.”