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Infosys Technologies Limited
From Bangalore India City Wiki
Infosys Technologies Limited is an information technology (IT) services company founded in Pune, India in 1981 by N. R. Narayana Murthy and six of his colleagues. In 1983, Infosys moved its headquarters to Bangalore, the capital of Karnataka. It operates nine development centers in India and has over 30 offices worldwide. Annual revenues for fiscal year 2007 exceeded US$3.1 billion with a market capitalization of over US$30 billion. With over 72,000 employees worldwide, Infosys is one of India's largest IT companies.
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History
Infosys was founded on July 2, 1981 by seven software professionals: N. R. Narayana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani, N. S. Raghavan, S. Gopalakrishnan, S. D. Shibulal, K. Dinesh and Ashok Arora. Murthy started the company by borrowing Rs.10,000 from his wife Sudha Murthy. The company was incorporated as "Infosys Consultants Pvt Ltd.", with Raghavan's house in Matunga, north-central Mumbai as the registered office. Raghavan is officially the employee #1 at Infosys. In 1983 Infosys got its first client, Data Basics Corporation from the United States.
In 1999 Infosys attained a SEI-CMM Level 5 ranking and became the first Indian company to be listed on NASDAQ. In 2001 it was rated "Best Employer in India" by Business Today, and in 2002 Business World named Infosys "India's Most Respected Company". Infosys won the Global MAKE (Most Admired Knowlege Enterprises) award, for the years 2004 and 2003, being the only Indian company to win this award.
Timeline
- 1981: Founded on July 2
- 1987: First international office in the US in Fremont, California, now its US headquarters
- 1992: Became a public limited company in India
- 1996: First office in Europe in Milton Keynes, UK
- 1997: Office in Toronto, Canada
- 1999: Listed on Nasdaq
- 2000: Opened offices in France and Hong Kong
- 2001: Opened offices in United Arab Emirates and Argentina
- 2002: Opened new offices in Netherlands, Singapore and Switzerland
- 2002: Started Progeon, its BPO (business process outsourcing) subsidiary
- 2003: Acquired 100% equity of Expert Information Services Pty Limited, Australia (Expert) and changed the name to Infosys Australia Pty Limited.
- 2004: Set up Infosys Consulting Inc., U.S. consulting subsidiary in Texas, U.S.
- 2006: July 2, Infosys celebrated its 25 years
- 2006: Became the first Indian company to ring the NASDAQ Stock Market Opening Bell
- 2006: August 20, N. R. Narayana Murthy retired from his position as the executive chairman
- 2006: Acquired the 23% stake Citibank had in its BPO offshoot Progeon, making it a wholly owned subsidiary of Infosys and changed the name to Infosys BPO Ltd.
- 2006: December, became the first Indian company to make it to Nasdaq-100
- 2007: April 13, Nandan Nilekani stepped down as CEO and made way for Kris Gopalakrishnan to occupy his chair.
Key industries
Infosys serves various industries through its vertical business units, such as:
- Aerospace and Automobile (AnA)
- Banking & Capital Markets (BCM)
- Communication Service Providers (CSP)
- Resources, Energy & Utilities (REU)
- Hi Tech & Discrete Manufacturing (HTDM)
- Insurance, Healthcare & Life Sciences (IHL)
- Media and Entertainment
- Product Lifecycle and Engineering Solutions (PLES)
- Retail, Distribution & CPG (RETL)
- Transportation & Services (TnS)
- Independent Validation Solutions (IVS) - provides software testing services.
- IT Infrastructure Management Services (IMS) - manages core networks, data centers and servers of clients.
- Real Estate
- Life science
In addition to these, there are business units aligned to clients' geographies, such as EMEA (Europe, Middle East & Africa) and APAC (Asia-Pacific). There is also a horizontal business unit named ES (Enterprise Solutions), which specializes in ERP and package implementation and works with clients across industries and geographies.
Initiatives
In 1996, Infosys created the Infosys Foundation in the state of Karnataka, operating in the areas of health care, social rehabilitation and rural uplift, education, arts and culture. Since then, this foundation has spread to the Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa and Punjab. The Infosys Foundation is headed by Mrs. Sudha Murthy, wife of Chairman Narayana Murthy.
Infosys offers internship to university students from many parts of the world through its InStep programme. Most of the interns work at Electronics City, Bangalore. The premise of the internship is to promote the corporate brand globally while interns gain business or technical work experience.
In 1997 Infosys started the "Catch them Young Programme", to expose the urban youth to the world of Information Technology by conducting a summer vacation programme. The programme is aimed at developing an interest and understanding of computer science and information technology. This programme is targeted at students in Grade IX level.
In 2002, the Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania and Infosys started the Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Award. This technology award recognizes enterprises and individuals who have transformed their businesses and the society leveraging information technology. Past winners include Samsung, Amazon.com, Capital One, RBS(Royal Bank of Scotland) and ING Direct.
Research
One of the major initiatives taken by Infosys in terms of research was to develop a corporate R&D wing called Software Engineering and Technology Labs (SETLabs). SETLabs was founded in 2000 to carry out applied research for the development of processes, frameworks and methodologies to effectively capture customer requirements and to iron out common critical issues during a project lifecycle.
SETLabs has several researchers with PhDs and technical architects who work on advanced technologies like web services, grid computing, mobile computing, business process management, knowledge engineering etc. SETLabs has created about five to six frameworks in the domains of business modelling, technology and product innovation.
Infosys publishes a peer-reviewed quarterly journal called SETLabs Briefings which has articles written by the researchers at SETLabs on various current and future business-transforming technology management themes.
Trivia
- An investment of Rs. 9,500 (100 shares at an issue price of Rs 95) in the initial public offering of Infosys in 1993 (Rs. 9,500 was approximately $300 according to the 1993 exchange rate) would now be worth Rs. 29,440,000 ($665,235 according to the 2007 exchange rate) after adjusting for stock splits and bonuses. This is a 3000-fold increase in rupee terms over a 14-year period (1993 - 2007) and does not include the dividends that the company has paid out.
