Non-linear growth: the road ahead for Indian IT outsourcing companies; The Infosys experience; In conversation with S. Gopalakrishnan, CEO and MD, Infosys Technologies

Abstract

Indian IT outsourcing companies (major among them being the SWITCH companies – Satyam, Wipro, Infosys, TCS, Cognizant and HCL) grew rapidly for more than a decade on low cost business process and IT outsourcing. With the bigger companies already reaching a high of 100,000 employees, they are now turning their attention to non-linear revenue (i.e. revenue less dependent on numbers or greater revenue earned per employee). For this they need to pursue ‘disruptive’ strategies which are distinctly different from the ‘incremental’ initiatives they adopted in the past to maintain linear revenue. This paper first outlines the disruptive and the incremental initiatives of the SWITCH companies and the road ahead for them. This is followed by an interview with S Gopalakrishnan, CEO and MD, Infosys Technologies who discusses the non-linear initiatives of the company and the challenges it faces in the field