The Hindu Business Line : India preferred market for offshoring: Infosys CEO

Opening hi-tech centre: Mr Kris Gopalakrishnan (centre), Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Infosys Technologies Ltd, with Dr A.E. Muthunayagam (left), Chairman, Board of Governors, IIT Madras, and Prof M.S. Ananth, Director, IIT Madras, at the inauguration of PG Senapathy Centre for Computing Resources at IIT Madras, on Friday. —

Our Bureau

Chennai, Aug. 10 “The India story is so strong that it is difficult to convince clients to move their projects to China,” according to Mr S. Gopalakrishnan, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Infosys Technologies.

Infosys Technologies is unable to increase the pace of headcount ramp-up at its Chinese operations, as clients prefer outsourcing their work to India. “We are prepared to increase headcount provided customers give us business,” he told presspersons on the sidelines of a function at IIT Madras. The company has 700 employees in China, including software developers.

Mr Gopalakrishnan said there was no shortage of skilled workers in China and that only business was lacking there.

‘Two-quarter’ strategy

When asked about how the company tackles margin pressures this quarter (due to the strong rupee), he said they had decided to adopt a ‘two-quarter’ hedging strategy where net receivables of two quarters would be hedged against currency fluctuations. Infosys is re-looking its portfolio of services and work practices to optimise offshore work. “Rather than deploying tools made by other companies, we want to use our intellectual property and in-house tools in client projects,” he said.

As part of the portfolio re-assessment, would Infosys focus on increasing the consulting component of its business? Unlikely, he said.

Mr Gopalakrishnan quelled rumours of Infosys planning to acquire the consulting company Cap Gemini, saying there had been no such intentions.

Computer centre

Earlier on Friday, he inaugurated the P.G. Senapathy Centre for Computing Resources at IIT Madras. The Rs 20-crore centre, named after Mr Gopalakrishnan’s father, houses several high performance computers and servers hosting Internet, email, academic and administrative support functions with a computing power aggregating to 10 peta-flops (10 raised to the power of 15 floating point operations per second).

Resources at the centre can be used for industry-academia research besides students of IIT Madras. The Department of Atomic Energy has expressed interest to install some more servers and carry out their experiments here, said Mr Timothy A. Gonsalves, Professor and Head, Department of Computer Science, IIT Madras.

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