We've a clear approach to navigate to next phase: Infosys CEO Salil Parekh

The growth of your digital business at 25% (YoY) is no match as compared with that of TCS, said Parekh

Infosys' Q1 numbers may not have the fire power that the larger rival TCS demonstrated with the same quarter financials last week, but the company’s Chief Executive Officer SALIL PAREKH tells Debasis Mohapatra & Alnoor Peermohamed that the vision he has set is moving in the right direction. Excerpts:

You have embarked on a three-year journey and this fiscal is for stabilisation. We want to understand how far have you managed to stabilise the business? What are the key pain points right now? What are those key pain points in attaining that stability?

We have gone through one-fourth of the year and you've started to see some of those elements fall into place. What we have today is a comprehensive strategy that we've laid out. We've laid out a clear grand approach to navigate to the next phase. We have an intense level of client engagement to start to understand how we can leverage our portfolio. We have a team that's driven and motivated to build that business, and we're starting to put the building blocks in place to drive strategy and execute upon it, and also put in place the first steps (this being the first quarter) of our three-year transformation programme.

The growth of your digital business at 25 per cent (YoY) is no match as compared with that of TCS, which has posted a 40 per cent growth in digital business. How would you like to catch up with them as well as Accenture, which is by far the leader in this space?

In terms of digital business, we only launched this approach a few months ago when for the first time we started culling out what was digital within our portfolio. We think 25 per cent (growth in digital business YoY basis) is a very healthy, strong, robust growth rate and we are confident that if we build and invest in this business, we will continue to see the traction in this segment.

Do you feel that the write-offs for Panaya have come to an end this quarter? Are you getting a sense of the value of Panaya from the negotiations?

In terms of Panaya, as Ranga (M D Ranganath, CFO of Infosys) explained, there's an ongoing set of discussions on how we want to act upon the disposal and sale of it (Panaya) in keeping in line with those discussions and the accounting guidelines. We have taken the approach to state the numbers that we've stated. As and when that concludes, we'll update you with that.