The financial services vertical of Infosys closed a $500 million deal, the company?s largest-ever single deal, during the quarter ending December (client identity not revealed). Ashok Vemuri, head of Americas and global head of financial services and insurance at Infosys, tells FE?s Ajay Sukumaran that the uncertainty in large markets such as Europe and the US has shifted the business dramatically towards integrated solutions. He adds that the company?s deal pipeline in the financial services sector has never been as healthy as it is now. Excerpts:

You have closed your largest-ever deal this quarter. How do you see the quarter turning out even as IT budgets get finalised?

The key is for us is: How successful the strategies that we have designed will be in the environment we are operating in? The environment has a significant amount of uncertainty and there?s significant regulatory pressure. We are very happy that we are meeting the requirements of our clients and the traction is growing increasingly. So, today we are in a position that is comparable to nine months ago where we can say that our success ratio has significantly improved and by that I mean we were winning three transformational deals like this, today we are winning five to six deals.

What is the deal pipeline you are seeing over the next couple of quarters?

I would say the deal pipeline has never been as healthy as we see it right now. I cannot quantify that in either dollar terms or number terms, but suffice to say we have never seen a better and healthier pipeline.

What?s driving this?

The driver, basically, is that the strategies that we put together around Infosys 3.0 ? integrated solutions, integrated delivery and building a capacity for consulting and solution integration capability. That, along with the ability to build and take products into the market, is the real reason why we are seeing this kind of traction. Anybody who is going to do pure commodity play in this market is not going to be successful.

How does the US market look, especially with this being an election year?

We think there will be opportunities as they are in other parts of the world. The US macroeconomic data is very positive. As regards an election year, every four years we hear the noise. They are a very savvy country, they do not let the economic compulsions get overshadowed by political ones.

Can you tell us about your plans for development centres in the US?

We are looking at building development centres there as well, we are going to be hiring from campuses. It?s only a matter of time before we need an infrastructure that is able to house some of the resources we have. We have hired from campuses before, but now we are going to go hire again in a big way from both engineering schools and management schools.

A US court has ruled out arbitration in the visa case. Does this come as a setback?

It doesn?t. This is a process that you have to follow. The court has decided on a particular date for a hearing and we are very happy that it will give us an opportunity to tell the world how things are and we have not hidden anything. We welcome the opportunity.