Today, the San Francisco Chronicle published this interview with Infosys CEO, S. Gopalakrishnan: Pioneer in the field of global outsourcing. Infosys is one of the world’s largest outsoucing companies, with more than 91,000 employees, 40 offices worldwide, and $4 billion dollars in revenue.
As a relatively young business process outsourcing (BPO) provider, we found this interview particularly interesting. In it, S. Gopalakrishnan traces the growth of Infosys from its early years:
I think of ‘81 through ‘91 as the surviving ascent company, surviving to establish a viable business. This is the period when the Indian economy was almost closed and it was a very different era. So we struggled a lot. We didn’t have much to show for all that struggle. We hardly grew. I think in 1991 we would probably have had about a million dollars in revenue, something like that.
In ‘91, the economy opened up. We did an initial public offering in ‘93 and invested that money into the business. That was the period of building the foundation of the company, of a stable organization – working systems, processes, lots of things we did to create a strong foundation for growth.
And then in ‘99 – helped by the Y2K boom, the telecom boom and the Internet boom – we began growing more than 100 percent year over year. That’s been our period of accelerated growth. It took us 23 years to get to the first billion, 23 months for the second billion, 12 months for the third billion and so on.
Looking forward, S. Gopalakrishnan notes continued opportunities for growth:
The reason why we continue to grow is that our market share is very, very low. We have only about 500 clients. There are a lot of companies that we don’t work with. So there is still opportunity for growth.
The outsourcing ”pie” is projected to offer growing oppportunities for offshore IT/BPO providers in other countries as well. You can imagine how exciting this prospect is for an emerging BPO such as ourselves. Infosys is a model of success that we certainly hope to emulate in the coming years.
