Infosys’ new chief executive officer (CEO) has come up with a novel approach to reviving the financial fortunes of India’s trailblasing outsourcing firm: use Facebook at work, tweet, but get the job done.

Infosys has long been run as a conservative company known for keeping strict tabs on work hours and sometimes fining employees for not wearing ties on specific days. Such cheerless self-regard could not have come at a more challenging time, analysts say.

Markets opened marginally higher led by oil and select financials but upside gains are likely to be capped ahead of the expiry of September derivative contracts tomorrow. Further, selling by foreign funds also weighed on sentiment.

At 9:35AM, the 30-share Sensex was up 40 points at 26,816 and the 50-share Nifty was up 15 points at 8,032.

BANGALORE: Infosys has raised the salaries of its top executives so sharply that some of them are now in the $1-million (Rs 6-crore) compensation club - making them almost unpoachable by even international rivals - and raising the salary benchmark in the Indian IT industry.

The executive vice-presidents who are now at the Rs 6-crore level had salaries in the Rs 1.2-Rs 2 crore range previously, meaning that they have got three to five-fold hikes.

Markets continued to trade lower in noon trades on Monday weighed down by profit taking in IT and pharma majors.

At 12:50PM, the 30-share Sensex was down 107 points at 26,983 and the 50-share Nifty was down 41 points at 8,080.

Infosys' two-year transformational process may take at least another two years as the company aims to scale itself to offer high-value services, according to experts who got a chance to interact for the first time with Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director Vishal Sikka at an event in Berlin last week.

Even so, analysts who were at the customer event believe that if successful, the country's secondlargest software exporter could see improved margins with a new approach of trying to balance "to-do-same-for-less" contracts with "co-innovate-withthe-customer" type of deals. "Vishal presented a plan to reposition Infosys BSE -1.53 % as a co-innovator for new business logic jointly with the customers," said Stefan Ried, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research.

Markets continue to trade weak in the morning trades weighed by profit taking in Index heavyweights Infosys, HDFC twins and Pharma shares amid weak Asian cues.

At 10.12 AM, the 30-share Sensex is down 110 points at 26,981 and the 50-share Nifty has shed 41 points at 8,080.

In the broader markets, the BSE Mid-cap and Small-cap indices are outperforming the large counterparts and are up between 0.2-0.5%.

India’s second largest software services firm Infosys has signed a contract with commercial real estate developer Skanska Property for leasing its office space for 10 years, the biggest such transaction in Poland this year.

The expansion comes in the wake of Infosys planning to expand the workforce at Lodz delivery centre by 500 people.

Infosys on Thursday said it had widened collaboration with Microsoft and Hitachi Data Systems, in line with chief executive Vishal Sikka's vision to strengthen software offerings and expand global alliances.

These partnerships will help India's second largest information technology (IT) services company to improve offerings in new technology areas like cloud computing, big data and analytics, and also in communication and infrastructure and data centre transformation solutions.

BANGALORE: Indian IT companies will be fiercely competing with MNCs for five big IT contracts in Australia valued at over A$2 billion (Rs 11,000 crore).

Infosys, Wipro, TCS and HCL Technologies are participating alongside IBM, HP and Capgemini in request for information (RFI) and request for proposal (RFP) for incremental IT outsourcing work coming from Sydney Water, Rio Tinto, Jetstar, Aurizon and Transport for NSW, said an Australian IT consultancy firm that did not want to be named.

Mumbai: When N. Chandrasekaran was named chief executive officer (CEO) and managing director (MD) of Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) five years ago, analysts and insiders started talking of the firm’s acronym being short for “Take Chandra Seriously”.

Chandrasekaran proved them so right that no one was surprised when India’s largest software services exporter last week appointed the marathon runner CEO and MD for a second five-year term effective 6 October. Given his track record, shareholder approval to the appointment seems to be a mere formality.

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