“We would have seen this level of traction with our clients in any scenario,” the 57-year-old, who has helmed the company over the last four years in which it has outgrown peers, said. The Bengaluru-based IT services provider will continue to gain market share going forward, Parekh told
ET’s Romita Majumdar, Surabhi Agarwal & Raghu Krishnan in an interview.
Edited Excerpts:
You have set Infosys on a strong growth path. What are your next goals?
(Our) four years of very strong strategic focus has resulted in this industry-leading performance. There are some critical components – a big focus on digital. We’ve gone from about 25% of our (revenue) in digital to about 58%. In the last quarter, we grew about 21%. Within digital, the biggest focus area was Cloud, where we put together this cloud capability called Cobalt that fuels much of the work with cloud companies. The most critical element is the skilling of our people, which…we have accelerated. We are leading the industry in many parameters on digital. We see very good traction for this financial year.
Broadly, the overall market traction is strong, the demand environment is good, and we continue to gain market share. Our focus will be built on these areas, and we’ll continue to refine what clients are really looking for.
Do you think this has also been accentuated because of the pandemic? Will Infosys continue to gain?
Clearly, we put in place many of these building blocks on digital and digitization over the past four years. We would have seen this level of traction with our clients in any scenario. Large companies have seen the benefits of digital in the last 18-24 months to better connect with customers or employees or within the supply chain. They have gone faster into it. We’ve been taking (digital projects) over the last four years and not just the last six months; we were extremely well positioned to support clients in doing that. This digital transformation is well under way with large enterprises … Several others are accelerating the journey, many others are joining in.
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What are your opportunities with Big Tech companies?
That’s another fast growth area within our client base because those businesses are growing at a tremendous pace. We have deep relationships across a broad set of companies in that area. Their growth in many places is so rapid that they’re very happy to work with Infosys as we support them in various aspects of technology and operations that they’re driving through. So, (there are) huge, huge set of opportunities in the digital natives. Typically, we have much, much faster growth there. Our own business within them is also growing at a very good pace.
What is your level of interaction with former Capgemini colleague Thierry (Delaporte) who now leads rival Wipro?
For us, the focus is much more on the market and our clients on their digital transformation work. Of course, Thierry is a good friend, and we are in good contact but that’s not our focus in what we are driving with the market. Our approaches need to make sure we build the cloud capabilities, continue with reskilling and be the leading place for digital transformation work with global clients.
You are saying that the digital pie is large enough for India’s IT services companies to not have to step on each other’s toes…
Today, the addressable market for digital is massive… look at what we’ve done for example on data and analytics and within automation and artificial intelligence. Once those capabilities are in place, and we keep developing, we believe that clients are looking more and more to those areas. We have a very specific set of approaches on modernization and what we do across the whole landscape for clients. So, in those areas, there is a tremendous amount of opportunity.
How is Infosys looking to deal with the talent crunch as well as the increased cost of talent?
Our objective is to make sure that that work continues without any impact. The industry is seeing more attrition over the last few quarters, but our work and ability to work with clients has not at all been impacted. We have put in place many measures to address the issue within Infosys. We have a large recruitment programme; this year we will recruit about 55,000 college graduates. So, every quarter, we will be increasing it for the next financial year. We’re looking at ways to increase the rewards. We’ve done three salary increases already in this financial year, and we will continue to do what we feel is appropriate for the wellbeing of employees.
How is the hybrid work model evolving, given that working from home is back?
Our view all along has been to be flexible, which is to support our employees in their safety and wellbeing. In the past 18 months, our clients have been extremely supportive, and we have already put the infrastructure in place. Today, we have the flexibility where employees can work from home at any stage that they choose to. We have almost everybody continuing to WFH except for a few critical areas. However, we also feel that social capital is important and over time, we will start to see employees coming back into offices. But we want to keep this flexibility and this hybrid approach in place…So far, we’ve seen in many of the cities where we have our centres…a little bit of plateauing, but we’ll see how long it lasts. Fortunately, we are not seeing any tremendous level of hospitalisation within the employed base, like in the previous wave. So, once this passes, we will re-engage in a flexible way and people will start coming back to the office.
