Infosys Technologies

Job applications still pour in at Infosys, but its young employees aren’t entirely happy. Result: The Numero Uno tumbles down our rankings this year. Regulars at the Strand bookshop in Transit, a multi-purpose facility on Infosys’ sprawling 80-acre campus in Electronics City, on Bangalore’s southern periphery, can often expect some august company. N.R. Narayana Murthy, the company’s co-founder-Chairman and Chief Mentor and confirmed bibliophile, can be found quietly looking for the latest best-seller in a corner of the basement book store. For Infoscions looking for a quick byte on life and work from the company’s founder, this may be their best opportunity and several of them are quick to seize the opportunity, sidling up for a quick chat or handshake with one of the Indian IT industry’s icons.

Job applications still pour in at Infosys, but its young employees aren’t entirely happy. Result: The Numero Uno tumbles down our rankings this year. Regulars at the Strand bookshop in Transit, a multi-purpose facility on Infosys’ sprawling 80-acre campus in Electronics City, on Bangalore’s southern periphery, can often expect some august company. N.R. Narayana Murthy, the company’s co-founder-Chairman and Chief Mentor and confirmed bibliophile, can be found quietly looking for the latest best-seller in a corner of the basement book store. For Infoscions looking for a quick byte on life and work from the company’s founder, this may be their best opportunity and several of them are quick to seize the opportunity, sidling up for a quick chat or handshake with one of the Indian IT industry’s icons.

Now, it gets harder

While Infosys may have set the standard in the Indian IT industry with its swish training campus in Mysore (spread across 200 acres and tutoring some 16,000 fresh recruits annually), compensation and recreational facilities, the Bangalore-headquartered company faces the fight of its three-decadeold existence on the people front

Although Infosys is still a terrific brand, the rules of the game have changed quite noticeably in the last 12-18 months and Infosys may have been caught off guard. At a very basic level, the firm no longer sets the benchmark in Indian IT in terms of salary and other forms of compensation, with MNCs and niche companies in areas such as chip design pulling ahead on this front. “Large MNCs such as IBM and Accenture are playing catch up and they can afford to spend heavily to lure the best talent from the likes of Infosys, who can help hasten their offshore presence,” says Venkat Shastry, Partner at Stanton Chase, an executive search firm. According to some industry estimates, MNC competitors could pay at least 25 to 30 per cent more for experienced talent and offer a much broader geographical breadth of jobs to lure them away from well-known names such as Infosys. “We don’t see Infosys on the really big global deal and this is an edge for us,” says Sandeep Arora, Lead Executive, Accenture Centre for Delivery, India, which has grown from 250 to 35,000 people in six years in India alone.

The booming Indian IT industry, which is galloping ahead at 30 per cent annually, has also enabled other companies in areas as diverse as chip design and outsourced product development to rapidly expand their presence, often at the cost of the best talent in companies such as Infosys. “We offer a much more lucrative career, since employees will be responsible for complete product development and it isn’t about just a low-value services contract,” says Gordon Brookes, CEO, Symphony Services, an outsourced product development company. Others argue that Infosys’ decline in this year’s rankings could also be reflective of how difficult it has found it to manage a much larger (and more complex) organisation. “We have added around 30,000 people in the last 12 months and we’re coming to grips with our transformation into a global entity,” says T.V. Mohandas Pai, Director-HR for Infosys. An issue like work-life balance—given top billing in the West—is not yet recognised with the same passion back home.

More About