Infosys Limited

Overview

Infosys sells technology work rather than technology products: custom software development, application maintenance, consulting, systems integration and business process services for large organisations, most of them outside India. It is one of the firms grouped together as the Big Six of Indian information technology, alongside Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCLTech, Tech Mahindra and LTIMindtree.

The company employs more than three hundred thousand people and delivers most of its work from delivery centres in India, a model the industry calls offshoring, with sales and client facing teams close to the customer.

Milestones

1. 1981Seven engineers incorporate Infosys Consultants Private Limited in Pune with 250 US dollars of capital.Incorporated on 2 July.
2. 1983The company moves to Bengaluru, then the centre of India's public sector electronics and research base.
3. 1980sEarly work includes hardware such as electronic telex terminals before the firm settles on offshore custom software.
4. 1993Initial public offering in India at 95 rupees a share, an early listing by an Indian software firm.
5. 1999Listing on the New York Stock Exchange through American Depositary Shares, which changed how global clients vetted the company.

Growth and leadership

The 1991 liberalisation of the Indian economy opened the door to export work, and the firm's revenue grew quickly through the decade as global clients moved maintenance and application development offshore. The 1993 listing and the 1999 New York listing gave it both domestic visibility and the reporting discipline that Western buyers expected.^[2]

N. R. Narayana Murthy was chief executive from 1981 to 2002 and chairman until 2011, when he became chairman emeritus. He returned as executive chairman in 2013 for a four year term.^[1]

Leadership then passed through a period of external chief executives. Vishal Sikka, formerly of SAP, led the company from 2014 until his resignation in August 2017 after a public dispute with the founders.^[3] Salil Parekh, previously of Capgemini, was appointed managing director and chief executive in January 2018 and continues in the role.^[7][8]

Acquisitions

• Panaya (2015), an Israeli automation testing company, acquired in a deal reported at about 1,200 crore rupees.^[4]
• Skava (2015), a United States based digital commerce firm, acquired for about 120 million US dollars.^[5]
• Noah Consulting (2015), a data management consultancy for the energy industry.^[6]

The acquisitions of the mid 2010s were part of a push into higher value work such as automation, analytics and digital commerce, and they became a contested subject inside the company during the leadership change that followed.^[3]

People and the wider sector