Infosys 3.0 has truly started to roll, says Infosys CEO SD Shibulal. It has started to pay early dividends in line with its vision of maintaining value growth even in a difficult economic environment, he says in an interview with FE?s PP Thimmaya.
What are the early success stories of the Infosys 3.0 strategy?
We are now in the execution phase. The Infosys 3.0 strategy is about winning in all portfolios that we have created. We added 39 new clients, of which 14 were from the financial services space. We did an acquisition (Lodestone) which is in our strategic area of consulting and system integration (C&SI). We won six very large deals, two of which are more than $200 million value in the infrastructure management. We have also bagged eight transformational deals in the C&SI space. In the products and platforms space, the company has got more than $100 million in total contract value (TCV) booked. These are all early indications of our success of execution.
Will high quality growth remain the vision even in the current economic environment?
Our vision and aspiration drive the strategy.?Infosys? aspiration was always to have to high quality growth and we clearly believe our strategies are the right ones to meet this. However, there has been no material change in the external economic environment.
The deal momentum is showing signs of picking up. How is Infosys positioned in such a scenario?
There were some reports which said that in the last quarter the number of deals were down but this quarter it has gone up. On a global level it is still down. However, this still creates opportunities for us, to apply our solution models, global delivery model, cloud based services, consulting etc. It is a great opportunity; we are well positioned to make a strong pitch.
With the recent acquisition of Lodestone Holdings, have some of the plans changed?
It will become fully integrated with Infosys but remain as a wholly owned subsidiary. This will start once the deal is closed and it will take about a quarter or two to complete the integration process. After that we expect significant downstream work from Lodestone to flow into Infosys.
How will Infosys address the issue of rising attrition?
The unemployment in US is around 8.5% but in IT industry it is 3.5%. This means that there is demand for people. Our attrition rate has gone up and we are making many interventions like enabling higher autonomy for business units, investing in building capability, rolled out compensation increase etc. I would personally prefer attrition rate to be in 10-12% range though now it is marginally high. These numbers are meant to be statement of facts, when one sees a fluctuation; you try finding the root cause and addressing it.