Buoyed by two consecutive quarters of large deal wins, Infosys has projected more such deals in the coming quarters and has started hiring entry level software executives in the US, as it seeks to match industry level growth.
India’s second largest software exporter is riding on the back of a strong couple of quarters, wherein it won large deals, whose total contract value were in the range of $500-550 million in the first quarter and followed it up with $830 million in the second quarter.
At the end of second quarter, top 10 accounts contributed almost 23 per cent to its revenues.
However, COO, U B Pravin Rao, indicated that while the demand environment is strong, the second half of this financial year will be weaker than the first half. “There is good momentum coming back into the banking sector but energy, utilities and telecom continues to be challenging,” he said while addressing analysts at the CLSA conference call.
Rao added that Infosys has recruited 250 from the campus as an experiment for the entry level software delivery jobs. If it works, we will increase it to 1,000 in the future, he said.
This comes at a time when the politicians in the US are calling for stricter H-1B visa norms and recently, some senators even proposed a Bill, which, if passed will put curbs on number of H-1B visa holders.
Cost optimisation Additionally, the software major is planning to adopt more cost optimisation measures such as reducing the expense of from an onsite presence perspective, something which Sikka believes should be looked upon as an alternative to applying for H-1B visas.
Newly appointed CFO M D Ranganath said that apart from large deals, the company is also looking at mining larger business volumes from its top accounts, an area where cross town rival Wipro has seen some success.
“Deals more than $50 million are important as they can be a seeder for annuity revenue quarter after quarter which can also bring stability to absorb any quarterly shocks,” he said.
Infosys shares closed at ₹1,061, or 1.7 per cent down compared with the previous day’s close.