Infy plans 10 mn sq ft office space

Infosys to build campuses on 6.1 mn sq feet of space to accommodate 27,000 seats in 2006-07.

To support its rapid manpower growth, Infosys will build state-of-art campuses on 10 million square feet of space across the country to accommodate around 44,000 seats in the next 24 months. This is equivalent to the entire office space taken up in the city during 2004.

Infosys has embarked upon projects to build campuses in seven locations, totalling 3.2 million sq feet to accommodate 16,600 seats in 2005-06.

Likewise, the company has set itself a target to build campuses on 6.1 million sq feet of space to accommodate 27,000 seats in 2006-07.

In 2004-05, Infosys built campuses on 2.9 million sq feet of space in six different locations in Karnataka, equipped with 10,400 seats.

According to TV Mohandas Pai, director, chief financial officer and head of finance and administration, Infosys: "In 1994, Infosys set up India's first large campus for a software company in Bangalore. This set a precedent. After that, we challenged ourselves to innovate and from then on we went on to create campuses that became the role model for the software industry. Today, we have a flexible infrastructure model in place which is strongly aligned with our rapid growth."

Infosys is currently growing by over 10,000 people a year. "For this, creating land banks was a big challenge to the company. We persuaded state governments to allot us land. This was available only at a distance from cities, and required good roads to campuses, power lines and assured water supply, and our own transportation," said Pai.

The company has equipped each campus with power generation facilities, water purification, sewerage treatment plants and security systems to make it independent.

According to him, campuses are equipped with latest technologies and solutions for office productivity, collaborative software engineering and distributed project management.

The campuses include facilities for training, fitness and sports, multi-cuisine food courts, a multi-level car park and residential apartments.

Infosys valued at over $3 billion

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The value of the Infosys brand has risen by nearly 73 per cent to Rs 14,153 crore ($3.22 billion) on March 31, 2005 from Rs 8,185 crore on March 31, 2004. In the previous year, the brand was valued at Rs 7,488 crore.

At today's closing price of the Infosys stock on the Bombay Stock Exchange, the market capitalisation of the company stood at Rs 58,798 crore. This makes Infosys' market capitalisation 4.15 times its brand valuation. On the basis of its valuation in 2004, it was 4.02 times on March 31, 2004 (when m-cap was Rs 32,909 crore).

Infosys, which believes that a brand is a 'trustmark' and a promise of quality and authenticity, used the brand-earnings-multiple model to evaluate its brand.

The brand earnings multiple is a function of a multitude of factors such as leadership, stability, market, internationally, treand, support and protection.

The company evaluated these factors on a scale of 1 to 100 to determine its brand value, it said in the annual report for 2004-05.

The value of Infosys' human resources stood at Rs 28,334.25 crore on March 31, 2005 -- 34 per cent higher than Rs 21,139.97 crore in the previous year.

The growth came from rise in employees in software delivery and support system from 25,634 on March 31, 2004 to 36,750 on March 31, 2005.

The company used the Lev & Schwartz model to compute the value of human resources.

The evaluation was based on the present value of the future earnings of the employees. Infosys has assumed that employee compensation includes all direct and indirect benefits earned in India as well as abroad.

The future earnings have been discounted at 13.63 per cent (previous year, 14.09 per cent).