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INFY 25 SPECIAL: China, India should leverage each other's strengths

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CIOL Bureau
New Update

NEW DELHI: India and China should leverage each other's strengths,

according to Kris Gopalakrishnan, chief operating officer of Infosys

Technologies Ltd.

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He does not share the view that these two fast emerging economies are

competing with each other.

“It is not a question of China or India, but China

and India. We should leverage each other's strengths. With a huge talent pool

and manufacturing base, China provides an option to access resource and grow

further for Indian companies.”

Infosys sees China as a huge market opportunity and plans to increase its

delivery center capabilities there.

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The Indian IT major, which celebrates its silver jubilee in July this year,

employs around 500 people in its China center and plans to up this to 1000 in

the next two years. It will further increase its headcount to 5,000 in the next

five years.

“China has a significant domestic market and the economy is growing very

rapidly. We are looking forward to tapping this market with our China centers.

Many MNCs are also entering China and need local support. We plan to provide

this support to them. Markets like Japan and Korea find it easier to work with

China as they have similarity in their written language and culture.”

The current top verticals for Infosys include BFSI, retail, telecom and high

tech. It now plans to tap the healthcare and consulting verticals.

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The company will expand its India presence and also enter new service

verticals like infrastructure management, testing and validation, etc. for

further growth and acceleration. It plans to set up five special economic zones

(SEZs) in Tier II cities.

"We plan to set up SEZs in Pune, Chandigarh, Thiruvananthapuram,

Bangalore and Mysore."

Looking at acquisition as a growth strategy, Infosys is aiming for acquisitions

in verticals like banking and financial services, healthcare and life sciences.

It is looking to acquire companies to gain entry to new geographies.

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“We are looking at acquiring smaller companies with revenue of $50 million

- $100 million. These would act as a seed to grow in that geography,” the

Infosys COO said.

Recently Infosys had announced plans of recruiting 25,000 employees by this

fiscal year-end. On shortage of talent in India, Gopalakrishnan said, “We are

concerned about the talent pool in India. In the long term, this could translate

into a shortage of skilled people. Currently, only 40— 50 per cent of the

educated people are employable. In order to increase the skill base, there is

need to increase the number of engineering colleges, increase the number of

students and improve the quality of the students.”

To strengthen the skill base, the company is running a program, the Campus

Connect. It focuses on aligning the needs of engineering colleges, the faculty

and the students with the needs of the industry.

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“Our endeavor is to continue to be the preferred employer. This means that

in a talent crunch situation, we are able to attract employees.”

Earlier, Infosys had announced plans to recruit 300 college graduates from

universities in the US this year and 25 graduates from the UK in 2007 to create

a diversified, global

workforce
.

In 2005-`06, Infosys doubled the percentage of non-Indian employees, hiring

more than 25 different nationalities: yet another way for the company to build

its skill base.

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