A year on, how Vishal Sikka has put his stamp on Infosys

A year on, how Vishal Sikka has put his stamp on Infosys

Bengaluru: One mid-summer day last year, Vishal Sikka, then recently named as the first non-founder chief executive officer (CEO) of Infosys Ltd, met with some senior executives of the company at a guest house in Hauz Khas in South Delhi.

Sikka, now 48, had a question for the group, which included then CEO S.D. Shibulal.

“How many projects are underway at Infosys?”“It took the team four-five weeks to assemble this data in one spreadsheet,” Sikka said in an interview in May.

Once he joined the company in August 2014, Sikka—he is considered the brain behind German software firm SAP AG’s blockbuster data analytics platform HANA—made sure that all Infosys project managers updated the status of their projects and shared it with his executive assistant. Starting January, he has been getting a spreadsheet on each of the projects the company is working on.

“Every weekend, I go through this,” said Sikka in the May interview.

There are around 8,500 projects on the spreadsheet.

On Friday, 31 July, Sikka completes a year in office.

The milestone comes less than 10 days after Infosys pleasantly surprised analysts. The company’s revenue grew by 4.49% sequentially to $2.256 billion in the three months ended 30 June, or about $30 million more than the consensus estimates of analysts. The most optimistic estimate expected the company to grow by 3.5%.

By then the valuation differential between Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) had narrowed to under 10% from over 20% in early July, Mint’s analyst Mobis Philipose wrote after the results.

Sure, Philipose caveated that “investors shouldn’t get carried away with the good revenue performance in just one quarter. Other IT companies such as TCS and Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. have been far more consistent with their performance,” but the buzz about Infosys—all bad a year ago—is beginning to change.

The Infosys of today is a far cry from the late-1990s company that could do no wrong, but it is no longer the firm that, not too long ago, couldn’t seem to get anything right.

In his year on the job, Sikka has already been able to stabilize Infosys by building a stronger senior management team, lowering attrition, engaging better with customers, improving employee morale and winning more business from existing clients, according to industry veterans, analysts and company insiders who report to him.

In this period, Infosys has also embraced disruptive (and cool) technologies such as automation and intelligence (AI).

There have also been downs.

Infosys posted dismal fourth quarter numbers (January to March) and failed to meet its earlier guidance of growing at 7% in 2014-15.

Investors started getting jumpy and Sikka tried to assuage investor concerns. In the third week of May, over a two-day visit to Hong Kong, Sikka met with multiple large investors, five times. Since Sikka was appointed CEO last August, Infosys has briefed analysts 10 times—Sikka himself addressed them seven times.

But there has been more good news than bad in recent months.

So, has the risk taken by Infosys’ board and then chairman K.V. Kamath (now chief of the BRICS Bank) in tapping Sikka for the top job paid off?

Has Sikka transformed Infosys employees into innovative thinkers from mere order-takers, which will help the company regain its title as the bellwether of the country’s $146 billion outsourcing industry?

“His major achievement to date has been stabilizing Infosys after the turbulent times after (N.R. Narayana) Murthy’s return,” Thomas Reuner, managing director of IT outsourcing research at HfS Research, said, referring to the Infosys co-founder’s failed attempt to revive its fortunes after coming out of retirement in 2013.

“The first year of Vishal’s tenure at Infosys can be characterized as a roller coaster of often conflicting perceptions, sometimes being the saviour of one of India’s iconic companies, sometimes being portrayed as daring to manage Infosys out of the (Silicon) Valley, thus eroding the Indian business culture,” Reuner said.

Sikka declined to be interviewed for this story, but here, collated from multiple meetings with analysts, investors, rivals, and insiders, are eight ways in which the new CEO—he is still considered that—has been changing things at Infosys.