Desi IT majors outscore global giants

By agencies   |   Wednesday, 12 October 2005, 19:30 IST
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BANGALORE: Indian software service providers are doing head-to-head against legacy IT majors such as IBM and Accenture and there is a major transitional change happening at the market place, a business newspaper reported. An industry expert said that the much superior quality of our service and our global delivery model have created enormous pressure on legacy players, adding that the recent order from ABN Amro Bank vindicated this. There are still four-five other large deals in the pipeline, whose details cannot be mentioned due to their long gestation period before they fructify, SD Shibulal, director and head of sales and delivery, Infosys. He said large deals give boost to the company to go beyond the application, development and maintenance (ADM) segment of the software services business, which at present accounts to 50% of revenues. The top five clients’ contribution to total revenues was 17.8 percent, while the top 10 clients added 30.6 percent. The number of million-dollar clients stood at 191 against 172 in the first quarter. Infosys has one $90 M client. The total number of active clients during the second quarter was 450 against 443 in the previous quarter. S Gopalakrishan, COO, Infosys, said while talking to Economictimes that the churn among the top 10 list was very negligible as two clients moved out and two came in. Region-wise revenue during the second quarter, North America still dominates with 65.4 percent, followed by Europe at 23.7 percent against 63.6 percent and 23.9 percent, respectively, in the previous quarter. Infosys saw a 72.9 percent utilization rate, including training, as compared to 74.1 percent in the first quarter. The time and materials project type dominated the business constituting 71.3 percent and fixed price at 28.7 percent. During the quarter the company added 34 new clients in the second quarter. Shibulal said there was a strong demand from existing customers. The company saw a repeat business at 96.5 percent as against 98.7 percent during the first quarter. The company had added 20,200 employees in the current financial year, said 12,500 have already been added in the first half of this financial year and the balance will be added in the following two quarters. On the attrition rate of the company is at 10 percent, among senior mangers, who come under the excellent performers category, it is at around 4.5 percent, which will not impact future business prospects, he added. The increase in headcount of 6,390 employees during the second quarter was the highest for Infosys during the current financial year. “As many as 952 joined the organization in one single week during the quarter,” said Gopalakrishan. Mohandas Pai, CFO, said Infosys is the largest recruiter of engineering graduates from colleges in Karnataka. The state, however, lags behind neighboring states in producing engineering graduates. Tamil Nadu, for instance, has 280 engineering colleges, which churn out 94,000 students, while Andhra Pradesh has 250 colleges with 74,000 pass-outs. In Karnataka, 44,000 students were churned out from 180 engineering colleges.