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Bangalore , Oct. 10

INFOSYS has announced that it plans to set up a software development centre in China with 200 people.

Mr Nandan Nilekani, the Chief Executive Officer, said the company has applied to the Chinese government to set up a wholly owned subsidiary with $5 million as capital. It will act as a hub for software services in Asia Pacific, he said.

The China subsidiary will offer end-to-end software services to domestic companies and multinational companies operating in China.

Infosys has about 4,800 employees on H1B visas and about 1,800 employees on L1 visas. About half our H1B visa holders are in the US said Ms Hema Ravichandar, Senior Vice-President, (HRD). Given the recent regulations about the number of visas being issued and talk about the L1 visas, Infosys says it has enough visas for the foreseeable future and given its lower exposure to the L1 visas, it would not have a serious impact.

"We also pay both types of visa-holders roughly the same and therefore expect no impact on operations or margins from any activity on the visa front," Ms Ravichandar said.

Infosys has plans to expand operations in Australia - where it has a development centre with 120 people. More permanent residents and locals will be taken on board at all our development centres - be they in Australia or Morocco, said Mr Nilekani. Investments in infrastructure will continue in China, Morocco and Toronto for Infosys. Progeon has plans to set up a centre in the Czech Republic, according to the company, but no details were available.

Maintenance work contributed 31.6 per cent to revenues, up from 26.9 per cent last quarter while revenues from consulting fell to 3.4 per cent of total revenues, down from 4.4 per cent last quarter and 4.7 per cent in the corresponding previous period.

However, Mr Nilekani said that 35 per cent of the quarter's revenues were from new services and that the company had moved up from offering plain vanilla services to value-added services. "Infosys is beginning to partner global corporations in cutting-edge high tech work,'' he said.

Infosys added 29 clients during the quarter, taking the total to 51 so far this fiscal. These spanned the retail, healthcare, automotive, energy and banking sectors. Infosys' Banking product - Finacle - was implemented by several top public sector banks in India, private sector banks and by a Saudi Arabian bank, according to the company.

Infosys' top single client contributed 6.6 per cent to total revenues, while the top five clients contribute 24.6 per cent to revenues. The company has 119 `million-dollar' clients, and three `forty million dollar' clients with about 70 clients ranging from `five million dollar projects' to `thirty million dollar' projects.

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