Tag: Infosys

Business World

Great Lakes Institute of Management hosts Narayana Murthy as part of its ‘Distinguished Thought Leadership Series’

Feb 19, 2021 by Neel Achary 0 Comments #Chennai, #Founder, #Great Lakes Institute of Management, #Infosys, #Padma Vibhushan Mr. Narayana Murthy

Mumbai: Padma Vibhushan Mr. Narayana Murthy, Founder, Infosys graced Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai in a virtual fire-chat session organized by the institute. Mr. Murthy addressed a strong audience of 750+ participants and shared his insights based on the experience and observations over the years.

During the session, Mr. Narayana Murthy touched upon some key topics. He started off with his definition of an entrepreneur and explained that entrepreneurs come with bright and powerful ideas. His latest venture is all about unleashing the power of young Indian minds. He highlighted few qualities than an individual should possess to become an entrepreneur. Some of these qualities include competency, leadership, learnability and a sound value system. He further elaborated and said that an entrepreneur should transform the power of ideas into job and wealth creation. He then touched upon the topic of whether the Indian I.T companies have moved up in the value chain system? He said that, Indian companies have been doing work that is of high value for their customers and are now focusing on higher per capita productivity. But the sector still remains as reactive problem solvers which needs to change and a more proactive approach is the need of the hour.

He then spoke about the role of using luck to one’s advantage. Hard work plays a key role in shaping your career. He said, ‘’Chance favours the prepared mind’’. When you fail as an individual, it is important to introspect your failure, analyse, decide on the next step and then act accordingly. He then spoke about how entrepreneurs can handle multiple roles in their initial stages of entrepreneurship. He was quick to add that his philosophy of choosing a team is to pick bright youngsters, review constantly and give them an opportunity to grow. He also emphasized on developing checklists and have constant dialogue with the team which can help and improve upon what you are doing at that point of time. High learnability, discipline and hard work are keys to enhance productivity. Mr Murthy also said that, he personally prefers learnability over experience for skills.

He next addressed the concern wherein I.T. sector pays higher remunerations than some other sectors and we are losing great talent in the sectors. He addressed the companies from different sectors and said, they need to sit down and ensure that the workplace provides a learning experience. Companies should visit campuses and sell jobs to students and provide better compensation. He added that, students nowadays prefer careers where there is learning involved. Also, curriculum in colleges need to keep pace with the industry demand and in-company training programs should be a key area of investment for the companies to groom talent. He then stressed upon the New Education Policy and rued the lack of constant research and innovation in Indian educational institutions. He mentioned that the New Education Policy (NEP) is certainly going to improve the quality of education. He called for a change in the mind-set of the society and said that the focus should be upon instilling curiosity, problem solving, open-mindedness, respect other’s opinions and not afraid of learning among the youngsters. He said that there is a need to embrace these traits in our cultures and then change will follow.

Please find the link to the recorded session by Narayana Murthy addressing students and faculty from Great Lakes Institute Chennai.

Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15tCXrJGYn9pzf4NA3zcysbhskgtOgN7_/view?usp=sharing

Speaking during the event, Dr. Suresh Ramanathan, Dean, Great Lakes Institute of Management, said “We are honoured to have the magnanimous presence of Mr. Narayana Murthy. His wisdom, knowledge, experience and vision is unparalleled and today’s event was a chance for our students to pick on his thoughts and learn from the man himself. His idea of originality, problem-solving, creativity, importance of values and sense of balance can truly go a long way in shaping our society and empower the youth of tomorrow. I also want to thank our esteemed audience who were part of this momentous occasion and we will continue to invite leaders who can be a source of inspiration for our students and other generations.”

Business World

Exclusive Interview: Salil Parekh, MD & CEO of Infosys in conversation with Shereen Bhan on CNBC-TV18

Oct 30, 2020 by Gouri Achary 0 Comments #CNBC-TV18, #Infosys, #Salil Parekh, #Shereen Bhan

Q: Let me start by asking you about the transformation strategy that was put in place when you joined the company almost 3 years back in 2018 in January. The focus then was on winning large deals, on becoming more relevant in the digital space and skilling employees as well as further efforts to localize. Now you have been able to achieve good metrics on each of those parameters that you had set out. So, as you start your fresh year, is there going to be a new strategy, will you do a little bit of the same, will it be something different, are you going to sharpen and refine the current strategy? What should we now expect?

A: I think absolutely — we have had many of those areas – digital, reskilling, and focus on what we do with our employees, all of that working well. Our focus today going ahead is continuing with where we are. We close out the third year in March and at that stage, we will start to look at what could be the further refinement. What we are really seeing is much more work on digital transformation. As you know, we reported 25 per cent growth in digital in the previous quarter and we see that traction continuing. About half our companies now focused on digital. We are seeing more and more work in the cloud space. We launched our own cloud brand ‘Infosys Cobalt’ a few weeks ago. So, that should continue and much more refinement in that direction.

Q: On the digital front, because when you posted your numbers, you did talk about 50 per cent of revenues coming from the digital business soon. Can you quantify that for us? What is the timeline that we are looking at?

A: Soon means in the next few quarters because we have been growing at this very good pace of 25 per cent for some time. Even though this whole crisis environment, with the global economy in a difficult situation, our growth in digital is continued. The focus for many large enterprises is really to adopt digital and drive it through. So, really in the next few quarters, we hope to see us crossing over the 50 per cent.

Q: What we are seeing today is a resurgence of cases across the US and Europe when it comes to COVID. Is that a concern? Are you starting to hear nervousness from clients already on the back of that?

A: Today we are seeing that the cases are increasing, the model that we build or the scenarios we built had anticipated some of that to come about. Our growth guidance, which is 2-3 per cent, bakes in some of that. Of course, if there is an extreme scenario, we have not baked it in, but we do not see that coming today and we don’t see at this stage any nervousness from our clients especially on the digital portfolios.

Q: I want to talk a little bit about what we are now starting to see in a post COVID era – when I spoke with Rajesh Gopinathan he said that we are at the start of the first phase of a multi-year tech transformation cycle. How are you reading that and what is this going to mean structurally for each of your businesses going forward? What is it going to mean in terms of spends as well that you foresee?

A: The technology world is really going through a massive change and any large enterprise is leveraging technology for different uses. So, you look at businesses whether in retail, in banking, in insurance, everyone is leveraging technology to make sure that they are connected with their consumers, their customers in a direct way, in a digital way. All of that is a benefit for us and Infosys because the more there is focus on these digital technologies, the more we see growth in the coming years. Once we get beyond the COVID situation, my sense is we will come back to where we were as we entered it. We had a very good growth pace of 9.8 per cent; my sense is we will start to come back to that and now this wave has further accelerated.