INFOSYS GROWTH CATALYST

Salil Parekh's focus on large deals helps company close the gap with industry leader TCS.

- RUKMINI RAO

IN JANUARY this year, Salil Parekh completed five years at Infosys and the company gave him another term of five years to lead the company. No surprises here, given that in the history of the company, Salil has added the highest incremental revenue and ensured that it stands up to arch rival Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). At the company’s annual general meeting in June this year, Chairman Nandan Nilekani endorsed Salil for steering the company towards growth. “He has successfully institutionalised the One Infosys approach to position our company to work with clients for their long-ranging digital transformation, cost efficiency and resilience programmes that are of vital importance for them to thrive in the near term,” Nilekani said in his speech.

A few years ago, TCS was almost twice the size of Infosys. The gap is narrowing. For instance, in FY20, Infosys’ revenue was $12.7 billion compared to TCS’ $22 billion. In past three fiscals under Salil Parekh, Infosys has been growing much faster than TCS, adding an incremental revenue of nearly $5.5 billion ($18.2 billion in FY23). TCS added $5.9 billion. Its full-year revenue was $27.9 billion in FY23.

While IT services firms were embarking on digital journey, focusing on newage digital transformation deals earlier too, Covid accelerated the trend globally, benefiting Infosys. Infosys is today inching towards pipping Cognizant ($19.4 billion in CY22) to become the second-largest IT services company in the country.