Plot No 44, Electronics City, Hosur Road, Bangalore 561229
Tel
8520261
Fax
8520362
Website
www.infosys.com
Nandan Nilekani CEO, president and MD
S Gopalakrishnan
COO and deputy MD
K Dinesh
HR, IS, quality
SD Shibulal
Customer delivery
TV Mohandas Pai
CFO and head, Progeon
Srinath Batani
Delivery, US (West)
Basab Pradhan
Senior V-P, head of sales
Sanjay Joshi
V-P, head of marketing
Hires largest number of people ever, even as per-person productivity and profitability falls
Undertakes branding exercises in the US and Europe as customers seek vendor consolidation
Has an uncanny knack for branding/messaging. Will benefit as customers choose size and brand
Though small by global standards, has the vision and ability to look like a truly global Indian MNC
Overly dependent on the US—more than most of the industry, as well as its closest competitors
Growth led by high-volume, low-value business. While this is good for now, it can become a handicap once things begin to look up
Stock analysts call it the "bellwether of the Indian IT industry".
The moniker is deserved. The reasons are incomplete. Infosys Technologies is a
bellwether not merely because its share price marks the sector’s performance
on the bourses, but because it has the uncanny knack of catching a trend at its
point of entry. Last year saw two key trends at different ends of the market. At
the top end, vendor consolidation and customers’ flight to scale. At the lower
end, a spurt in smaller outsourcing deals and serious bargaining on each of
them. Infosys moved to address both. It spent Rs 29 crore—or 11% of its
S&M budget—on branding exercises only, including rolling out CXO city chat
forums in key cities across the US and Europe. And it doubled its overall
S&M budget to better address the smaller clients.
Meanwhile, other changes that had begun with the downturn continued during
the year. Both onsite revenues and onsite billed man months increased for the
second year in a row. While billed man months increased from 31% to 34%, onsite
revenues increased from 51% to 55%. The company’s attempt to de-risk itself
from the US came to naught, as North America’s contribution increased yet
again to 73%.
The service mix also continued to change. While development and maintenance
revenues remained more or less flat, re-engineering projects came down to half.
The company’s consulting practice, which it had hoped to grow, held steady at
a little over 4%, while testing and package implementation revenues improved.
The key event of the year though—the company added a record 4,618 employees to
its rolls in fiscal 2003 after a skid on hiring in fiscal 2002, when it added
just 907 people.
Contrary to previous years, however, this is not necessarily a good thing.
Each new head now adds less and less to the bottomline, partly because of the
downturn and partly because at over 15,000 people, the law of diminishing
returns is beginning to kick in. The new challenge—to grow out of the
body-count business and find a more value-added route to profitability.
