Infosys scrambling to hire: Gopalakrishnan
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The light is visible at the end of the recession tunnel, and at least in the IT sector, growth is back, according to Kris Gopalakrishnan, CEO and MD of Infosys Technologies.
“We ourselves have given a growth guidance of 16-18 % this year, and the larger companies are all showing growth’ he said, underlining the growth picture with the statement that “we are scrambling to hire”.
Infosys’ new facility here recently crossed the 3,000-employee mark and the company chief expects the Thiruvananthapuram facilities, including an upcoming building in the outskirts of the city, to employ roughly 6,000 professionals.
Infosys’ positive outlook extends to its China operations, where it has development centres in Shanghai and Hangzhou. The headcount there is 2,000 and the operations have broken even. Gopalakrishnan said his company’s China experience was “very good” though the Chinese authorities took two years to decide on the company’s demand for a 100% ownership. “Once that decision was taken, it was smooth sailing for us in China”, he said.
Gopalakrishnan said the return of the IT sector to the growth path would be reflected in the forthcoming quarterly results, and that the improvement in fortunes of the tech sector in general could also be gathered from Nasscom’s projection of a 16% growth for the BPO sector this year.
That rosy picture, however, has the thorns of a skill sets-gap that appears to be prevalent across the job-seeking spectrum in the country. The Confederation of Indian Industry’s southern region has conducted studies on the issue, and has made recommendations to state governments about the need to fill that gap.
On the issue of the employability of graduates from different states, Gopalakrishnan said the skills-gap appeared to be a nation-wide phenomenon, but added that Infosys’ experience was that graduates from Kerala showed a higher conversion (percentage of job aspirants who qualify for the job) at the recruitment level.
Referring to the long-standing criticism that the Indian IT sector had yet to make an impression in the IT products space, Gopalakrishnan said it was a little-known fact that two major IT product companies in the logistics, and billing and payment domains were IBS and SunTec from Kerala.
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