Infosys CEO Kris Gopalakrishnan said the firm has seen a good all-round performance in the December quarter. He tells FE?s Goutam Das about client additions, productivity, products and moving up the value chain.
What were the positives in Q3?
We have seen growth in revenue, volumes, customers?40 new clients?in Q3. We have also seen growth in our top 25 clients and also those outside it. We have added 11,000 employees as gross; attrition has come down in absolute terms. We are getting recognition as a leader in retail, in banking and capital markets.
Are you happy with the revenue per employee metric?
The revenue per employee has gone up by 1.6% this quarter. That?s a positive. It has gone up because of rate increases in some customers. ?We have been able to offset the margin hit due to rupee appreciation because of the increrase in revenue per employee.
How do you see divergence panning out in next 3 years?
The industry is not staturated. Our share of the overall IT spend of a trillion dollars is about $70 billion. It is a small-sized industry. The divergence is not going to kill any of the sides. It is just that there are two models. One is primarily driven by volumes and so you are willing to sacrifice margins. Second is focusing on value addition. Our focus is value addition and our positioning is that of a premium player. As long we are not saturated, there are opportunities for both. Certain services and companies may be driven by only cost.
Software products as a percentage of the overall revenue mix in Infosys crossed 5%. Are there more investments in Finacle portfolio?
There is definetely more investment into Finacle. We want Finacle to become a global standard for the banking industry. It is one of the top products in the banking sector today. We are getting more and more global clients and more larger banks are starting to use it. Second, we are developing many solutions across different verticals and we are able to charge license fee for these. ?We are now developing multiple point solutions in the area of smart grind and utility space, retail, banking and capital markets etc. Overtime, may be we can take these vertical solutions and create another Finacle-like large product.
An update on Infosys Public Services subsidiary in the US?
It is moving slowly. It has not made much progress. This is a new sector for us; we have to understand and recruit the right people. You have to identify the right people and it would take 3-4 months for them to join. ?The public secotor business will require us to create a delivery centre. That is one of the reasons why it is moving slowly. However, we are hiring in the US ? every quarter we are hiring 250, mainly laterals.