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Infosys Technologies Ltd is looking to buy a consulting company that has deep penetration into Europe or Japan.
“We don't set aside any budget for acquisition. We keep looking for an opportunity. There is no target because acquiring a company is like falling in love. I don't think anybody sets a target for falling in love,” Mr S. D. Shibulal, Chief Operating Officer, Co-Founder and Member of the Board, told Business Line . According to sources close to Infosys, the IT bellwether is in talks with a few companies in Europe for acquisition.
Mr Shibulal, who will take over as CEO and Managing Director in August, said Infosys — which gets 65 per cent of its revenue from business operations, 25 per cent from business transformation and around 9.5 per cent from business innovation (including Finacle) — was very strategic about acquisitions.
“In business operations, we have enormous strengths, so we may not gain from acquisitions. We could look at a consulting company in the area of business transformation. In business innovation, we can build it ourselves, co-create with a client, or take the acquisition route. Here, co-creating with a client is a better option because there is a client on the other side pushing us to do the right thing.”
Discussing the evolution at Infosys, he said the company has fine-tuned its model several times the last 30 years. “In 2002, this company was very different from 1999. In 2003, we had no consultants; today we have 4,000. In 2004, we didn't have infrastructure management as a service; today we get $400 million out of it.”
Being the only founder to have had experience outside of Infosys has also given him a different perspective, said Mr Shibulal. Referring to his brief stint with Sun Microsystems between 1991 and 1996, he said, “It does give you a different perspective because Sun at that time was a big corporation. Also, it was going through the whole transformation of the Internet era at that time. It definitely gave me a perspective that is different from Infosys.”
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