While Infosys
appears to have hit a roadblock, its top two non-founder executives - Ashok Vemuri and BG Srinivas - are hinting at strategy changes in two of the firm's most important verticals - Banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) and Manufacturing.
Less than a quarter back,
Vemuri, who ran BFSI for 20 years, and Srinivas, who headed Manufacturing, were
asked to swap roles in a move aimed at injecting fresh blood into the two sectors while exposing the two executives to managing new teams within the company.
Vemuri and Srinivas will be in the running for the CEO's post after current chief executive and co-founder SD Shibulal retires.
While BFSI contributes 35 per cent to
Infosys' revenue kitty of almost $7 billion, Manufacturing generates 20.5 per cent.
Ashok Vemuri
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Vemuri told
Business Today he is going to increase the company's exposure to sub-verticals it had little presence in - while Infosys had good presence in industrial manufacturing; it had marginal exposure to the hi-tech sector, for instance.
"We are diversifying. We are moving away from only industrial to hi-tech, aero, auto. We are going to focus heavily on core engineering, build robust product lifecycle engineering practice. But it is early days," he said.
From a market perspective, Vemuri plans to increase focus on the Asian market, especially in the hi-tech manufacturing segment in China.
"Latin America is going to play a big role. We will probably see less of Europe because manufacturing as an industry does not exist apart from Germany. However, eastern Europe is a big bet," he said.
BG Srinivas
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Srinivas said he has already started strategising on changes he needed to put in place in BFSI. There could be more focus on insurance as a sub-vertical.
"There is a large role for consulting, innovation and our platforms play in BFSI. The go-to-market approach is getting finalised," he said.
While BFSI is Infosys' largest vertical, it would be baptism by fire for Srinivas. Both Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Cognizant generate far higher revenues from the segment and has been driving down prices, an executive who did not want to be named said.
One would have to wait and watch to see whether Infosys' BFSI clients would be willing to buy consulting or platform-led services at higher prices from Infosys in a difficult business climate.
Lot of the project ramp downs in the March quarter was in the BFSI sector. This has led Infosys to guide full year 2012-13 revenue growth of 8-10 per cent, far lower than what the market expected.
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