Despite an admittedly lukewarm performance by the American market, a cloud over the economic environment and allegations of visa fraud in the US, Ashok Vemuri, head of Infosys America business, appears placid. In a conversation with FE?s Shreya Roy, Vemuri candidly talks about chinks in the company?s armour, implications of the lawsuit hanging over its head and about the company?s expectations from the all-important American market.

You had mentioned in the previous quarter that you had close to 15,000 employees in the US and would be hiring aggressively. How has the quarter been on that front?

Lateral hiring has gone up. Most of our businesses is in the US, so most of our hiring will be in the US. We are hiring more people who are specifically going to address our consulting and systmen integration business and help us implement our product strategy. However, I can?t share specific numbers.

You have received a lot of bad press due to the Jack Palmer case, in which your employee has sued you for misuse of visas in the US. How has that affected your image as a recruiter?

Nobody has rejected a job due to any of these issues. Nobody has come to us saying ?thank you for the job, but we can?t take it due to the J Palmer case.? At 9.9% unemployment, I don?t think people are thinking along those lines. Also, we are extremely transparent in terms of disclosure about what happened, what we think was a mistake, if there was one, the fact that we are cooperating with the regulators and the fact that we have allowed a full and complete transperancy in our process. I don?t think anybody should have a problem.

The performance of your business in the Americas has been a bit of a mixed bag. Can you ellaborate on the fugures and on what you expect?

Our America business is chugging along. We would like it to be a lot better than it is. But it is not because of economic uncertainities or lack of clarity as to where the world is going. These issues only get compounded due to continued high unemployment and talk of recession, among others. Year-on-year, there has been a dip due to an unnatural blip last year. Quarter-on-quarter, however, revenues were up from $1,020 million last quarter to $1,073 million. Nearly 45% of client wins have been from the Americas, with a majority of them being from retail, which is growing aggressively, followed by BFSI, which grew 31% y-o-y. Quarter-on-quarter growth was muted at 3.3%, because discretionary product revenue has gone down. Banking and capital markets have gone up by 7.5%, and insurance was up 5.5%. Overall, I would say the quarter was fairly impressive.

You mentioned retail has grown aggresively. What is driving this growth?

A lot of retail firms in the US are reinventing the way they do business. High unemployment has inspired them to relook the way they sell. And the significance of that is that there is a lot of investment that is happening in the supply chain and customer relationship management space. So, we are capitalising on that and we expect this trend to continue. Our retail busness is an extremely smart business. We have people who understand the domain and are able to build solutions and services which are very high end and customised. We believe that with the capability that we have built in the retail market, we should continue to see this growth trend well into the future. Not only in the US, but also in India.

In the previous quarter, you had stated that healthcare will be a growth driver for you for which you were building point solutions, and back end talent. How have your efforts paid off since then?

Healthcare grew by 3% q-o-q in the Amercas to $18 million. One of the things we?ve done is that we?ve built a product called ?iTransform?, which helps health exchanges. As per the new law in the US, all healthcare companies will have to build exchanges or participate in exchanges, to do an ICD 9 to ICD 10 conversion. This product will help them do that.