Infosys Technologies - The Best Company to Work for in India

Incredible Infy

Business Today has selected Infosys Technologies as the best company to work for in India.

The following is from the Business Today November 5th Edition.

What is the secret sauce that makes Infosys the best company to work for in India, year after year?

Chintamani ‘Buck’ Devashish is the Managing Director of Sterling Commerce India, an AT&T company, and also an Exfoscion, as all former Infosys employees are called. This 40-year-old, IIT Mumbai and IIM Ahmedabad alumnus was among the early employees the IT giant recruited way back in 1987, when it was still a glimmer in the eyes of its seven founders. It’s been 10 years since Devashish quit Infosys, but once in a while his nostalgia still gets stirred. Consider the last time round when that happened: Devashish, who had a long stint at Infosys subsidiary Yantra, was on a flight back to Bangalore from the US when he bumped into Infy Chairman N.R. Narayana Murthy on board the airport shuttle. Murthy, Devashish says, understandably, did not immediately place him, but when the Exfoscion jogged his memory a bit, India’s bestknown tech ambassador broke into a broad smile. “He immediately enquired about me and my family,” recalls Devashish. “Not only was he carrying his luggage himself, but when I offered him my seat in the crowded bus, he politely declined. Humility, respect, affection and genuine concern for the fellow human being…Murthy had lost none of it despite all the success. If you have to understand why Infosys and its HR practices are unique,” Devashish continues, “you have to understand the DNA of its promoters and how this has percolated down the organisation.”

Today, Infosys employs 65,150 people—far too many for Murthy or any of his co-founders, including CEO Nandan Nilekani, to remember by name—but the system tracks everyone individually. When terror attacks took place in London past July, the company ensured that every UK-based employee’s family members in India were kept posted. Whatever help—emotional, monetary or otherwise—that the distressed employees needed was provided. “That has become kind of routine to us. Whether it is a personal emergency or a natural disaster or any other issue that affects the welfare of the employee and his family, we are always ready to lend a hand,” says Bikramjit Maitra, Vice President and Head of HR at Infosys.

That’s no easy achievement. Over the last five years, the headcount at Infosys has grown at a CAGR of 40 per cent. Before it rings out 2006-07, Infy may add another 15,000 employees. The challenge for Infosys, then, is straightforward: How to remain, in some sense, a garage start-up at heart, while creating systems and processes that can withstand the stress of high-velocity growth? For instance, in the July-September quarter, Infosys logged a 50.4 per cent growth in revenues to Rs 3,451 crore over the same quarter last year, and by the end of this financial year, its annual revenues will soar to Rs 13,853 crore. Says S. Subramanyam, Managing Director, Ascent Securities and Consulting: “Underpromise and overdeliver. Infosys has done that consistently. What is amazing is the company’s ability to scale and execute.”

Making sure that ability improves as Infosys multiplies in size is something Nilekani and his team already worry about. “We work hard to ensure that Infosys sets benchmarks, including in HR practices globally,” says Maitra. Adds Hema Ravichandar, former head of HR at Infosys who now runs an HR advisory firm: “A big differentiator for Infosys is its ‘conscious paranoia’ to succeed and outperform itself. That means, she explains, a strong organisational thrust on innovation. Add to that its manic focus on execution, robust, institutionalised and scalable people processes and attention to stakeholder concerns, and you have a great recipe for sustainable success.

Paranoia It Is

Over the last 12 months, Infosys received 14,63,264 resumes from hopefuls. How many did the company hire? 22,913. That means every applicant has a less than 2 per cent chance of becoming an Infoscion—that is, an Infosys employee. Purely from a probability point of view, you’d be better off trying to crack the Indian Civil Service exams. Yet, Infy doesn’t allow itself to get smug about it. Especially, when it goes recruiting abroad. It might sound amusing, but Infosys was actually a bit apprehensive when it hit the US campuses mid-2005 to hire undergrads. “While Infosys is an aspirational brand in India, it is becoming known on the US campuses only now,” says Nilekani. “But we were pleasantly surprised by the response we got.” As many as 126 US campus recruits, plus 25 UK on-campus recruits, are now undergoing training alongside Indian hires at the software engineering boot-camp that Infosys runs at its facility in Mysore.

Why fuss over the recruitment of a bunch of kids from American campuses? Hasn’t Infosys been a global company for some years now, deriving 98 percent of its revenues from abroad and spanning 17 development centres in five countries? The answer to the question lies with Mohan Das Pai, a six-foot threeinch bearded giant of a man, who stepped down as the CFO in April this year to head the HR function.“For a company to be called truly global, what are the metrics?” he asks. “Do we get bulk of our revenues from the international market; do we have a footprint in various countries across the world; does our board reflect a transnational character and does the workforce also mirror this?” The answer, obviously, is ‘yes’ for the first three questions, but ‘no’ for the last one. Reason? A bare 1,958 of its 65,150 employees are non-Indian. Gathered from 59 different nations, they represent just 3 per cent of Infosys’ workforce, and Pai is keen to diversify the talent pool. “India will remain the largest source of technical talent, but there are areas where we need to cherry-pick global talent,” says Pai. Adds Priya Chetty Rajgopal, Vice President at search firm Stanton Chase: “Such broadening of the pool from where an organisation recruits leads to cultural diversity and is an asset to the organisation. It could also help prevent any kind of political backlash against outsourcing in general.”

Glass Ceiling?

There are, however, a couple of causes for concern at Infosys. “There is an invisible glass ceiling beyond which one cannot grow, except for the promoters,” says a former employee who now works with a competitor. “While it is undoubtedly a great growth engine, it does not have professionalism.” It’s a sentiment that Mohan Sekhar, Member of the Board and Chief Delivery Officer, iGATE Global Solutions, and who at one time headed Infy’s North American delivery, shares. “Given their growth of recent years and the changing HR landscape, they will probably face challenges in retaining key people,” says Sekhar.

While Nilekani denies there’s any invisible glass ceiling (see Infosys Is A Meritocracy), Ravichandar also says that Infy has to be careful. “It is critical that the employee stakeholder is never taken for granted and customised engagement plans are designed to ensure an inclusive work environment,” she says.

Indeed, there was a year (2003) when Infosys did not make it to the top 10 of BT’s Best Companies to Work for survey because of industry flux and its own inability to meet employee expectations. The following year, however, it came roaring back at #2 and has stayed at the #1 position since. Its dizzy growth and sterling stock are clearly one part of the reason. But as Chintamani ‘Buck” Devashish mentions right at the beginning of this story, there are several other ingredients that go into Infy’s secret sauce.

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A Day in the Life of an Infoscion

As a devastating cyclone struck bhubaneshwar in early 2000, it killed several people, destroyed property worth several hundred crores, and generally decimated everything in its path. Several hundred kilometres away, K. Sunita, then a software engineer based out of Chennai with Infosys Technologies, was worried about the fate of her parents who lived in Orissa’s capital Bhubaneshwar. Communication lines had been cut off and there was no way to reach her parents.

As news about the scale and nature of the cyclone began to trickle down, Infosys swung into action and set up a helpdesk to assist employees and their families located in Bhubaneshwar. That apart, Infoscions went around helping their colleagues and families. The company chartered aircraft to airlift its employees and their families to safety. “It is this kind of commitment,” says Sunita, seated at one of the hundreds of cubicles in Infosys’ campus buildings, “why I can’t think of moving to a different company, despite having spent eight years at Infosys.”

In those eight years, Sunita has grown from being a software engineer to a senior project manager now, in charge of a team of 180 people. Needless to say, Sunita is one of those who have benefited from Infy’s stock option plans, but she quickly clarifies, “That is not the reason why I have stayed. I like the open work culture environment. Everybody’s career is clearly mapped and people are rewarded on the basis of merit. That’s why I have not looked at a single outside job offer.”

Original story (Subscripiton required)

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Brand Infosys
Revenues: Rs 9,521 crore (2005-06)
Profits: Rs 2,458 crore
Total employees: 66,150
Attrition (per cent): 12.9 (in the last 12 months)
Average career tenure: 3.87 years
Training budget (actual): $145 million (Rs 667 crore)
Training man-days (actual): 8 lakh
In the past one year, over 14 lakh have applied, of which 22,913 got hired

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Interview With Nandan Nilekani, President, CEO & MD, Infosys

"Infosys Is A Meritocracy"

Infy’s ebullient CEO explained to BT’s Venkatesha Babu why his company continues to remain India’s best employer. Excerpts:

Can you decouple revenue growth and people numbers?

We are addressing this challenge in two ways. One is internal, the other is on the client side. Internally, we are trying to ensure higher efficiency especially on fixed price projects by using reusable (software) components. On the client side, we are selling higher value services and solutions.

What about attracting the right kind of talent internationally?

It is true that we have a great brand equity in the Indian marketplace. Infosys is seen as an aspirational brand—an advantage that, as of now, we don’t enjoy everywhere else. But we have made considerable progress on this issue. Infosys Consulting was started completely by a bunch of people internationally. This year we recruited 126 people off the campus in the US and 25 in the UK. We are hiring in China. Today, around 3 per cent of our workforce is non-Indian. Managing cultural diversity would be a key issue.

What about this perception that there is a glass ceiling at the very top, since it is still dominated by the founders…

(Interrupts, sounding a bit weary)…I think it is a very unfair thing to say. Raghavan (co-founder) left in 2001, (Narayana) Murthy stepped down in 2006, when my time comes, I will follow them. (Mohan Das) Pai, who is not a founder, handles significant responsibility. At the end of the day, ours is a transparent culture. Infosys is a meritocracy.

How will you ensure that there is connect between employee and the company as it grows rapidly?

We are acutely aware that there would always be demand for talented people. HR does a number of programmes to ensure connect between the company and its employees. We fundamentally believe in the philosophy of sharing wealth. This, along with our value systems and unique culture, is what makes Infosys different from others.