We have an aggressive plan to grow Indian market: Infosys

Four years after deciding to focus on getting outsourcing contracts from India, Infosys is charting out an aggressive plan to grow its revenue share.

The company gets only 2.5 per cent of its total revenue from India as of now. But recently the company has bagged deals from companies such as Bharti Airtel and Government projects like e-filing of income-tax returns, managing utilities service for Karnataka Power department. In an interview with Business Line, Raghu Cavale, Vice-President and Head, India Business, Infosys, shares more details on India game plan. Edited excerpts:

What are your India plans going forward?

We have won from a place where we did not have any presence.

We are competing seriously for Government deals and we have won some deals like the Income-Tax Department’s online filing of returns, managing banking and insurance operations for the India Post. The challenge right now is to how we scale this and how do we create more efficiency – both in terms of the solutions we bring to the market, our own efficiency and, of course, how all these finally boils down to revenue stream.

What potential do you see in the Indian market?

There are lot of reports like India is not shining, but we believe that we are very interestingly poised in the history of our nation, especially in terms of information technology.

India, as a country, is under invested, be it the private sector, public sector or the Government that there is a lot of potential.

Like most Indians, we tend to be very price sensitive, but that is the nature of the market, and we need to look at new methods and models. For example, for the income-tax returns, we are paid on the ‘per return’ basis. A lot more is expected in the Indian market and we believe that we are here to deliver.

Have you also undertaken some local Government projects?

We have won and successfully completed the entire IT for 90 lakh customers in Karnataka (for power distribution utilities).

The entire billing and energy audit is done by Infosys and we will be helping the Karnataka Government to reduce the AT&C (Aggregate Technical and Commercial) losses.

We have the solution called Smartgrid (cloud computing solution) – and it will be put on a ‘pay-per-use’ basis to be given to any private operator.

India has an installed base of about 200 gigawatts of power and we lose about 33 per cent of it in AT&C losses (by theft also).

So with such projects (through Smartgrid) we can reduce the theft and losses.

How do you see the growth of IT solution providers in India?

People who are born in the 1990s form the millennium generation that is IT savvy.

You cannot remain a non-IT savvy and such customers will force even a small retailer to invest in IT someway or the other. Increasingly, IT will play a major role because a person born with a ‘browser in hand’ would like to use Internet before purchasing anything or for a purchase online.

For example, buying movie tickets through online.

Therefore, for us IT providers, we have to watch the trends and supply a form of IT in that form.

And, India is a cost conscious country, so people do not want to put capital on that. They want hosted solutions…so they may not mind giving me 5 paise when they make a business worth one rupee.

So if I give them a hosted system, those are the systems that will work. Increasingly the private sector is also linked to the Government -- be it healthcare, retail or project like Unique Identification Authority of India.

That is where we want to create an entire ecosystem of being in all the spaces where IT is deployed.

What is your target in the next two-three years in terms of revenue from India?

We would be looking at 50:50 split between the Government and private. It is currently about 2.5 per cent on an average of the total revenue (Rs 40,352 crore as of year ended March 31, 2013) per annum right now and from there, we want to make it substantial.

There are lot of pressure to grow our revenues, but then we have to see how much we can deliver.

We have aggressive target to grow it to multi-fold and close to double digit growth in next few years.

> ronendrasingh.s@thehindu.co.in