BOTTOMLINE: Foodworld, Reebok eye opportunities in Infosys city

Infosys staff’s spending power delights vendors

Kavitha Vivek

Consider this: Close to 20,000 cups of coffee are sold everyday, at least 4,000 employees eat breakfast and lunch from the campus food stalls, 1,000 people have a snack in the evenings and another 800 stay on for dinner. And personal bookings for train tickets have clocked revenues of Rs 50,000 per week. All at Infosys’ new office complex on the outskirts of Bangalore.

With a captive customer base of 5,000 people right within the key target age group of 25-35 years coupled with high disposable incomes, Infosys City has emerged as a vendors’ delight. And for this much acclaimed technology company, catering to the techies goes much beyond providing them cutting edge technology to work on.

Given the success the vendors who set up shop at Infosys have seen, other retail and consumer product biggies are eyeing opportunities to tap the market within Infosys. Department store chain Foodworld is looking at setting up a mini market at the campus, sports wear major Reebok is considering holding special sale of its products, and even sound/music equipment experts Bose Corporation is planning to hold an exclusive display and obtain bookings for its products.

Others have also expressed interest to set up outlets retailing leather goods and even music.

“This is a key part of our overall HR strategy. For an IT company of our size it is not possible to provide a campus as clean and close to nature in the city. But the city does offer better connectivity and amenities. So, our plan was to provide the best of both worlds at one place,” says Infosys associate vice president, commercial and facilities, Binod HR.

So quite literally, if Infoscions could not travel to the bank when they needed, Infy brought the bank to them (four ICICI ATMs on campus). The employee simply does not have to look any further than the campus for all his needs and chores. The company currently offers vendor services across four main areas — food/beverages, leisure (includes entertainment and fitness facilities), home front services and travel services. This was put together by extensive outsourcing in exchange for company owned infrastructure. “We had the facilities, but did not want to get into managing all the services.
So we simply outsourced them. This way our employees get the amenities and conveniences, while the vendor gets the volumes at low overhead costs,” says associate manager facilities, Charles Hawkes. Incidentally, the company does not charge the vendors rental charges, and provides them the space to operate in.

Infy so far has established ties with over 10 vendors, including names like Coffee Day, Dominos Pizza, MTR foods, Orchard Fresh ice-creams, an outlet of Golconda Chimney (one of the city’s well-known restaurants) for Hyderabadi cusine, Ammu’s food stall for kababs besides other multi-cusine food courts.

There’s even an all Infosys Store for apparel set up by Indus League to retail its brands Indigo Nation and Scullers’ garments and even Infosys branded garments, all at discounted rates.

Interestingly, as part of the concierge services offered (managed through Les Concierges), employees even have access to getting their laundry done at the outlet on campus.

As for the leisure services, the options range from shaking a leg by opting for dance lessons imparted by the troupe of well-known dancer and choreographer Shaimak Davar or signing up for a membership to the Infosys Club to work out at the gym, attend aerobics classes or use the swimming pool and jacuzzi. The Infosys Club incidentally has close to 850 members, while around 200 are still on the waiting list.

Concierge and travel services also offer Infoscions all conveniences right from booking movie tickets, to submitting tax forms, applying for driving licences and even making personal travel arrangements.
Mr Hawkes adds that the plan is to extend all services in a phased manner across all its development facilities in Chennai, Pune and Bhubaneshwar.

According to Mr Binod, this strategy has also pushed up productivity levels and even kept attrition levels at comfortable lows. This system provides optimum mix of leisure with work and has therefore created a sense of belonging among employees, he adds further.