Infosys plans centre in Brazil

Bangalore: Infosys plans to open a new delivery centre in Brazil to increase their Latin American presence. This centre will come up in Araraquara and will be a 100-seater and will come up in 550 square metres. Further, it will employ 25 employees and provide SAP-related services to Citrusuco, a leading orange juice producer, amongst other clients, the company said in a statement. Brazil’s workforce, a growing domestic market and a positive environment fostered by the government make this country an attractive destination for us, according to Claudio Elsas, Country Head, Infosys Brazil.Our Bureau

Infy, HCL Tech, Wipro among the greenest in BRICS

New Delhi: Sixty-one per cent of the companies in the five BRICS countries - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - do not publicly disclose their carbon emission details, according to a survey by Environmental Investment Organisation (EIO), a UK-based climate change and finance think tank.

In the EIO survey, three Indian companies - Infosys (fourth), HCL Technologies (fifth) and Wipro (sixth) - have emerged among the top 10 companies with least emissions. This is part of a ranking of the 300 largest companies in the BRICS region, taking into account greenhouse gas emissions and transparency factors.

Brazil's alternative energy company, Cemig, tops the list of Environmental Tracking (ET) BRICS 300 Carbon Ranking, followed by Vodacom Group of South Africa and Lenova of China. The other firms among the top 10 list are Brazil's BMF Bovespa (seventh), China's Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing (eighth), Brazil's Natura (ninth) and Chinese firm Hopewell Holdings.

The new study also shows that large quantities of emissions are not being accounted for. Public disclosure of greenhouse gas emissions among the leading BRICS companies is highly inconsistent, with less than 20 per cent of entities correctly adopting the basic principles of greenhouse gas emissions reporting, the study points out.

The other key finding is that no company in the BRICS 300 Ranking fully reports emissions across its entire value chain. Scope 3 (value chain) emissions include greenhouse gas emissions from sources not owned or directly controlled by the company, but over which it has influence. It includes categories such as business travel, transportation and distribution, and investments.

Among the 300 companies, Asian Paints has ended up last with no public data and with a high emission intensity, according to EIO. The other Indian companies that constitute the bottom 10 list are Jaiprakash Associates (293rd) and Grasim Industries (298th).

"This ought to be a wakeup call for companies. Since the majority of total corporate emissions often come from Scope 3 sources, large quantities of emissions are not being accounted for. Not only could this be a source of unmeasured risk for companies, but it also means we are not getting the full picture in terms of corporate emissions. This is precisely why the Carbon Rankings are designed to encourage Scope 3 disclosure," says Sam Gill, chief executive officer at the Environmental Investment Organisation.

These rankings are compiled from publicly available emissions data taken from company sustainability reports, annual reports, and websites.

Infosys bags BMW contract for infra management services

Bengaluru: In a deal that will help it gain more share in the European market, Infosys announced that it has won a five-year deal from BMW Group for application basis infrastructure management services.

Infosys will open a new delivery centre in Munich as part of its global service delivery team and cover services, such as maintenance and operations of the web infrastructure, content management, SAP Basis operations, IT for IT (the company's internal IT system) and the business intelligence systems of BMW Group.

The second-largest IT services firm in the country garners around 24% of the revenues from Europe, where it is looking for more growth.

Last September, it acquired Swiss consulting firm, Lodestone, for over $350 million (Rs 1,930 crore). In the third quarter of fiscal 2013, the revenues from Euro went up 16.6% sequentially and 14.4% on constant currency terms. This was a reflection of the business gain through the acquisition.

"Our new delivery centre in Munich will help us achieve this objective for BMW and allow us to expand our local presence in a key growth market," said Ashok Vemuri, global head of manufacturing and engineering services at Infosys,

Overall Europe contributes a little under 30% of the $76 billion in exports that the Indian IT-BPO industry is expected to clock in the year to March 2013, with most of it coming from the UK and Nordic region

Infosys inks land lease pact for second campus near Technopark

Thiruvananthapuram: Infosys has signed an agreement with Technopark for leasing 50 acres of land for setting up its second campus here.

The Rs 1,000-crore campus will come up in the notified special economic zone (SEZ) in the up-and-coming Technocity, adjacent to Technopark.

Two Centres
Mr H.R. Binod, senior vice-president, Infosys, and Mr K.G. Girish Babu, chief executive officer, Technopark, signed the agreement here on Wednesday.

The Chief Minister, Mr Oommen Chandy; the Finance Minister, Mr K.M. Mani; the Industries Minister Mr P.K. Kunhalikutty; and Mr Kris Gopalakrishnan, executive co-chairman, Infosys, were present.

Also present were Mr P.H. Kurian, Principal Secretary, IT, Kerala; Mr M. Vasudevan, senior business development manager, and Mr K. V. Rajendran, general manager, Technopark.

Infosys already has two development centres in Technopark Phase-I and Technopark Phase-II, employing about 4,100 professionals.

10,000 More Jobs
It plans to set up more than one million sq. ft. of built-up space in the Technocity campus and employ 10,000 engineers. This will bring substantial revenue to the State exchequer and also enhance the local wealth generation.

The indirect employment created in and around the campus will be another 50,000.

The projected exports from this SEZ campus would be of the order of Rs 1,500 crore over the next five to eight years, the spokesman said.

According to Mr Gopalakrishnan, Infosys has been doing well in Technopark, which is reflective of the changing investment climate of the State.

Fastest Growing
At 30 per cent, the Thiruvananthapuram centre is the fastest growing of Infosys centres across the country, he added.

Infosys currently contributes more than 21 per cent of the total IT exports of the State (Rs 608 crore out of Rs 2,875 crore).

It plans to add another 3,500 engineers at the existing campus and ramp up exports to Rs 800 crore during 2012-13.

IT sector to create 2.5 lakh jobs in 2012, says Infosys

Krish Gopalakrishnan, Co-Chairman, Infosys says that the IT sector in India is projected to add around 2-2.5 lakh jobs in the next one year. He however cautioned of an economic uncertainity in the short term.

"In the medium to long term I am very optimistic about the prospect for the IT industry because technology investment will continue to grow and most of the companies today are looking at India based development centres, captive centres or service providers to support them. The critical mass has already been built in India and so I am very optimistic about the prospects for companies that are both multinationals and domestic companies based in India," said Gopalakrishnan.

Gopalakrishnan told ET Now: "When I look back in 2011, I am actually positive because in spite of a slowdown in the world economy the industry has done reasonably well. Last time in 2008, the growth came down to single digit whereas this time Nasscom projects a growth of about 16-17% which is actually very good growth rate given where the global economy is."

Commenting on Rupee depreciation, Gopalakrishnan said, "The volatility is always very difficult to handle. In the last 6 months, the rupee has depreciated by 20%, it is unprecedented and such volatility is very difficult for anybody to plan. If you plan to import something, already your costs have gone up by 20%. That is very difficult to plan and factor in. We need less volatility, we need more predictability on rupee movement."

Recent surveys of chief information officers (CIOs) by research firms like Citigroup and Forrester show that IT major Infosys will be much more under pressure in the months to come than its peers.

The Forrester report that surveyed over 1,000 CIOs found that in the next 12 months Infosys, which had 105 respondents, would see a 4% fall in client spends. TCS with 111 respondents will see a 23% rise in client spends, Cognizant with 78 respondents will see a 13% rise, Wipro with 94 respondents will see a 13% rise, and HCL Tech with 44 respondents will see a 11% rise.

V Balakrishnan, CFO of Infosys, recently said that the global uncertainty has made it tough to acquire large contracts as client spends will remain slow. He added that clients are cautious about committing to long-term projects and it would be difficult for Infosys to achieve the top end of the 3%-5 % sales growth guidance for October-December and the 17.1-19 .1% sales growth for 2011-12.

Indian IT companies like Cognizant, Infosys play down gains from rupee free fall

A sharp decline in the rupee means Indian IT services exporters are getting more bang for their buck, but most top executives are wary of the sudden dip as it adds to the current uncertainty. The rupee -- Asia's worst-performing currency this year -- has skidded nearly 17 percent from a 2011 high reached in late July as risk-averse investors flee emerging markets. It rebounded as much as 1.7 percent on Wednesday, a day after it touched an all-time low of 52.73. "If the change is gradual we can manage, but if the change happens at the end of the quarter, either way, we will have a big shift. We will not have the time to adjust," Infosys Ltd's Chief Executive S.D. Shibulal said at the Reuters India Investment Summit in Bangalore on Wednesday. Indian IT companies may also not reap the full benefits of a strong dollar as many of them hedge their positions against forex fluctuations. "By the end of September, we had $3 billion hedges in rupee expenses. About 60 percent of our rupee expenses were hedged," a Cognizant executive told Reuters. India's biggest listed biotechnology company Biocon , which receives licensing revenue from its partners Mylan and Pfizer, is not upbeat on the falling rupee either, as gains will be offset by imports getting dearer. "The Reserve Bank of India and the regulators have to rein in the free falling rupee because if you don't do that your imports are just going to cripple the economy," Biocon founder and Chairman Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw said. The rapidly falling rupee is also putting pressure on sectors like autos, infrastructure and realty at a time when high interest rates have already made borrowing more expensive.

Infosys staff want founders to stay, want Nandan Nilekani back

A near majority, 50%, think that the company is losing ground to TCS , while 29% attribute poor performance to poor leadership.

Employees of Infosys, which is being criticised for giving CEO positions to founders rather than professionals, have voiced strong support for the practice, an exclusive opinion poll commissioned by ET has found.

The poll, conducted among 201 Infosys employees in Bangalore by market research firm AZ Research , has found that more than a simple majority of employees (61%) want founders to become CEOs and think that it is a perfect arrangement.

About 75% of those surveyed think that Nandan Nilekani, one of the founders and former CEO, who quit two years ago to join the government, should come back as the CEO. A big majority, (74%), feels that Narayana Murthy , the iconic chairman, who is set to step down from his executive role in August this year, should continue to play an active role and not retire from the company.

But the poll, which was conducted over Wednesday and Thursday, also found a strong level of concern over the company's financial performance and its ability to keep up with competition. A near majority, 50%, think that the company is losing ground to TCS. About 29% attribute the poor performance to poor leadership, while 43% blame lack of aggression.

Nearly four in ten employees admitted that Infosys lacked the imagination to fire up its numbers and that Infosys had lost some of its past glory under Kris Gopalakrishnan , the current CEO of Infosys who is widely believed to succeed as chairman or vice-chairman.

Support for Mohandas Pai , the former HR director, whose abrupt resignation earlier this month and caustic comments about founders rotating the CEO role among themselves triggered a controversy, is also quite high.

TCS, Cognizant, Infosys, Wipro and HCL Technologies on hiring overdrive

Chennai: The hiring numbers of IT majors leave nothing to doubt about how far the companies have left behind the recession.

From the quarter ended March 31, 2010 to the one ended December 31, 2010, the top 5 IT majors in India--Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Cognizant , Infosys , Wipro and HCL Technologies .-together clocked a staggering figure of 1,14,038 net additions in terms of headcount. This stands in sharp contrast to the net addition figure of 47,462 in the corresponding year ago period.

Net addition subtracts the number of people leaving the company from the gross additions, and, therefore, is a better indicator of the actual increase in staff numbers.

"It reflects the buoyancy in the market. 2009 numbers show the uncertainty and the low sentiments prevailing at that point. Companies are feeling a lot more confident now and can afford some redundancy in anticipation of big projects which wasn't the case earlier," said E Balaji, MD and CEO, MaFoi Randstad, a HR consulting firm.

The numbers have shown a marked increase for each of the big IT companies. The net addition of TCS for the period from March quarter to the December quarter in 2010 was 37,260 which is almost double the figure of 19,311 clocked in the year ago.

Cognizant's net addition numbers increased from 16,700 in 2009 to 25,557 in 2010. Much bigger increases were seen for the other 3 IT majors-Infosys, Wipro and HCL Technologies. The same numbers for Wipro for instance, increased from 3,977 in 2009 to 16,745 in 2010; for HCL Tech, the number rose from 670 to 16,579; and for Infosys, from 6,804 to 17,897.

"During recession, companies weren't recruiting freshers. So there was a deficit, especially at lower levels. So what is happening now is that companies are replenishing the stock, with freshers accounting for a big part of it. The higher attrition in the current buoyant mood in the market is also playing a role in increasing these hiring numbers," said Amitabh Das, CEO of Vati Consulting , a recruitment firm.

Not only are the companies compensating for the lull in hiring, they also anticipate bigger and more valuable projects in the coming times. They are building up bench strengths to handle the bigger size and variety of projects they expect to come their way.

Wipro restructures to take on TCS, Infosys, Cognizant

At least forty senior and middle-level managers at Wipro - the country's third-biggest tech firm undergoing a rejig under the new CEO, TK Kurien - have quit over the past few weeks, as the company attempts to create a leaner organisation focused on fewer strategic bets.

People familiar with these exits told ET that those leaving Wipro include at least half a dozen senior officials across business units, several general managers apart from few dozen junior managers.

Having scrapped the joint CEO model, Wipro plans to do away with any redundancies that existed because of different teams reporting to the two CEOs. Moreover, closer alignment of business units with sales and delivery teams means several overlaps in managers involved with these functions.

'It was always coming - the good thing is that there are enough opportunities this year,' said a person who quit Wipro a few weeks ago. He requested anonymity.

Wipro's attempts to create a more focused organisation better equipped to fend off rivals such as Cognizant is expected to help the company regain lost ground and make substantial progress in markets like healthcare that offer multi-billion business opportunities.

In a year when new business is not hard to come by, companies such as Wipro are realigning their strategic bets. They are putting the best talent to execute their plans