In a bid to get back its stated goal of achieving the IT industry’s highest margins, Infosys plans to reach out to more start-ups.

Talking to Business Line on the sidelines of Nasscom’s leadership summit held last week in Mumbai, Chandrashekar Kakal, Senior Vice-President of Infosys, said that with thousands of start-ups mushrooming, it plans to bring them together and present their wares.

“This can be like a marketplace where a bunch of companies can come and present what they want to offer and we can pick and choose based on our needs,” added Kakal.

While this is the first time that a company is planning to connect with start-ups in such a way, Silicon Valley in California has similar initiatives. Programmes such as San Francisco Connected Technology Programme Participant Swap Meet and YCombinator are some of the forums where companies can buy or sell their services like apps.

Targeting areas

It would help us connect with companies that are creating different kinds of apps or in the Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud areas, explained Kakal. So, when these sorts of ‘connections’ can be used leveraging social media such as Facebook or LinkedIn, why is Infosys wanting to go through the traditional meet-and-understand way?

“Seeing these initiatives ‘live’ helps us to understand better and gives us a better picture regarding the people or management behind these ventures,” explained Kakal.

The company, which has been lagging behind some of its peers, is now trying to catch up on lost ground and initiatives like these will help them gain lost ground and help bag projects at better margins, according to analysts.

At the December ended quarter, TCS had EBIT (earnings before income-tax) margins stood 29.8 per cent, higher than Infosys, whose operating margin was 25 per cent.

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