Govt should focus on investment in education, infra, tech: Infosys CEO

Updated on: Sunday, February 20, 2011

Infosys CEO Kris Gopalakrishnan pitched for simplifying service tax and income tax procedures and hoped investment in education, infrastructure development and improving e-governance will get focus in Budget 2011-12.
"My request to the government is to focus on development of infrastructure, including education and improvement of governance in the coming budget," Gopalakrishnan said at the launch of its second technopark campus in the city.

He added the service tax and income tax problems faced by companies should also be resolved by making processes simpler, so that business friction was reduced.

The Infosys CEO said India would become the important centre for IT services in the next five to ten years.

"We have a growing pool of engineering talent. If ten years ago, we had four lakh engineers coming out annually, the number now is 14 lakh," he said.

No other country, except China, was growing at this rate. In United Sates, the sector was stagnating.

Infosys was focussing on emerging markets like India, China, Mexico, Brazil, Middle East, Australia and Japan, he said.

Gopalakrishnan said 63 per cent of Infosys' business was centred in North America, 23 per cent in Europe and 14 per cent in the rest of the world. "Our target market is large businesses like banks, financial services, retailers and transportation logistic companies.

"Infosys is projected to grow faster in the coming year. But still, clouds are there," he said, citing unrest in the Middle East, growing unemployment in the developed world and volatility in financial markets as challenges facing businesses.

"If the global economy slows down, this industry will also slow down," he said.

Stating that he was an optimist, Gopalakrishnan said there were about 2.4 lakh recruitments across the IT industry last year and it would be around two lakh this year.

He said the Infosys centre here had fetched Rs 440 crore revenue in the first nine months of the current fiscal and the revenue was growing at 30 percent annually.

"Though it is a small beginning here, there is great opportunity for the centre to continue to grow." The centre was doing a lot of work on mobile technology, digital commerce and enterprise mobility, he said.

The annual ITES exports from Kerala was currently worth Rs 2,400 crore, which was not a small amount, he said.

Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi are among the top 10 IT destinations in the country for their attractiveness, he said.

Govt should focus on investment in education, infra, tech: Infosys CEO

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