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A phenomenal success in delivering shareholder value to employees and stakeholders alike has been incidental in Infosys becoming the benchmark for IT services excellence worldwide. With its global delivery model being adopted by global players, and now as consultancy with the GDM model takes center-stage in the company's scheme of things, creating value will have new implications for Infosys and the market. CEO, president and managing director, Nandan Nilekani, is a man who stands between history and history in the making. In an interview to Yograj Varma and Goutam Das, Nilekani exudes confidence on making Infosys not just a great company, but a business proposition that stands apart.

Has the Global Delivery Model become commoditized?
No, not at all. What we are saying is that the world is expecting a better way of getting IT services. In the last 40 years, companies have spent billions of dollars on technology, often with very ambiguous results-they have overspent money, there have been time and cost overruns etc. They are fed up with all that. They are asking: "What am I getting from all this?" So we see an increasing trend for delivering value for money, for doing things on time, for being more predictable. We actually fill that slot. Now, customers are saying we want the best of both worlds-we want the value of efficient execution, reliability, predictability, and also great business understanding on your part so that we can figure out what needs to be done and do it well. That's the Holy Grail for any company-which is to combine the best of consulting with the best of global delivery.

Nandan Nilekani, CEO, president and MD, Infosys

Now, what's happening to the global guy is that the customer is forcing him to offer the same value proposition as us. The customer knows that we are giving a superior value proposition-we are giving it better, cheaper, and faster. We are driving the agenda now on this globalization stuff. The global guys are just the followers. They are restructuring internally and it is traumatic. They have to re-balance their workforce, make two different parts work together. For us, it is an exciting game. It is about growth, transformation, and adding things. For them it is about disrupting and changing things inside.

But sooner or later, MNCs will ramp up and generate efficiencies...
It has nothing to do with hiring 20,000 or 30,000. The whole company has to be structured like us. It is a business model thing. Infosys today has 70% of its employees in India and 30% onsite. They have to come to that level. Just because an existing global player is here and replicates our model, it doesn't mean they will go to them. We have gained a lot of goodwill because we have delivered. The reality is that a lot of firms in this industry have not delivered value.

Will your next value proposition fall in the consulting domain?
Our value proposition is a combined proposition-combining the best of consulting, which is business knowledge and solution capabilities with the best of our global execution capabilities. So, you get the best of both worlds.

What is the next level of evolution if you move to the level of EDS... to the revenue level of $10-15 bn?
I don't want to get into a specific revenue number. But the kind of brand we are building, the kind of services that we are offering, the kind of solutions we are creating, and the kind of scalability we are building in all aspects of business, we feel we have room to grow. We shouldn't take today's companies as a role model. We believe that we are building a next generation IT services company, which combines the best of global consulting capabilities and the best of global execution capabilities. And there is nobody out there who is doing that anyway. We are defining a new model. That's why I don't like to be compared with legacy guys.

Right now, the Indian IT industry is following a simple equation-more people=higher revenue. Do you see that becoming a problem?
Certainly. As the number of people in a firm grow, the management complexities are more, the agility that you have to develop is more. We have looked at that and have tried to build scalability on that-scalability by having multiple locations, multiple business units, transparent project management, training facilities, and scalability in recruitment processes. So, we are doing everything to scale up and still manage well. Look at it this way. Last year, we grew at about 48%. This year, we are expected to grow at about 34%, in dollar terms. Two things have happened. One, customer satisfaction has gone up inspite of growth. We are amongst the top employers. The key question always remains-if we are diluting customer satisfaction while growing? Or are you diluting employee satisfaction? The fact is, we are growing and improving on these dimensions.

Lot of senior people have recently quit Infy. What is the company's future beyond Murthy, Kris, or Nilekani?
We are building a multi-generation firm. This is a company that we are building to last. So, we are absolutely convinced that there will be multiple generations of leaders who will take this company forward. Moving forward, we are trying to create the culture, the DNA, to make sure that we transmit the DNA from generation to generation. All actions we take are with a long-term view. For example, we have the Leadership Institute in Mysore. That's not for today, that's for the next 20 years. We want to put in place the people, the leadership, the system, the processes, and the brand. It's like GE. We want to be a company that's around for many, many years. That is success.

Why is Infosys shying away from big ticket acquisitions?
Acquisition is not an end in itself. Acquisition is a means to an end. Do you know how many acquisitions Toyota and Dell have done? Zero. If it is in our strategic interest to do acquisitions, we will certainly do so.

Would you attempt building another Infosys today? If yes, would the business model be different?
I think the opportunity to build an IT services firm of this scale and size, starting today, will be a bit difficult because there are consolidations happening, there are bigger players now. The game may change. But, if you ask me if there's room for a company built on brand new innovation and that can become as big as Infy; of course. Look at Google. Market cap $400 bn. And, that didn't exist five years ago.

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