Beyond the Horizon: A Roadmap for Our Shared Journey

Dinesh Rao, Chief Delivery Officer, Infosys:

Very good afternoon, friends. It's indeed my pleasure and honor here today to be in the midst of all of you to give you all a very warm welcome to the larger Infosys family. Thank you so much. We've been at it, working with all the founders here for now quite over six months to an eight months time. But, the time has arrived and come by our side for you to be a part of this larger Infosys family. And I thought I'll just reflect back of my own journey, what I do, and then kind of relate to how all of you make such an important asset for us as we really look ahead. See, I'm a chief delivery officer of the organization. Broadly, 50% of Infosys, which is about $20 billion or $10 billion of services is what I'm responsible for globally. And the most important thing is I complete 35 years, while it's said 30 decades. The reason I say that is 35 years back when I joined Infosys in 1990, we were in a small bedroom, five bedroom house, and the size of the organization, I believe me, was not even as big as what you are here today, and revenue-wise, maybe very small. It was a bunch of those six gentlemen with who I joined. Of course, there was a larger part of us who believed in the dream, believed in the vision, and believed in what we really wanted to transform. What IT services of India could actually change the global outlook. In some sense, if it might, I tell you in the early 90s, when I used to walk in in US, I used to actually put India map and show where Bangalore was. And I used to tell them, I'm speaking English, we are computer literate. We are not come from a snake charmer's world. And believe me, so these are the conversations today to really realize that India is in some sense become a de facto country for everybody who looks up to IT services, consulting and whatnot. So my journey over the 35 years, obviously I have not seen anything, but as an organization, from the founding days that I have worked with the founding members, one of the few key things has been very seminal for us. We earlier started off saying that we wanted to be a globally respected corporation. For us, the word respect means everything and anything that we believe in actually, right? And that is something that we as an organization never ever compromised, right? Be it with respect to employees, with our customers, with society, with the government and etc. and everything, right? And today, how Infosys has walked through the last 45 years of its journey and if you walk through every one of those, right? Respect is something, a key thing that we hold very, very close and dear to us. And in fact, Mr. Murthy, the gentleman's photo that you saw, he used to fondly tell us, the net asset value of the organization is zero at 5:30 because all my assets walk out of the company. So it's important that we as leaders bring the energy, bring the passion, bring the purpose. And that's when the next day morning, give or take our market cap today is about $85, $90 billion. To that extent, the focus and the emphasis on the people and the customer has been the hallmark of what this organization meant for us, right? And today, while you really look at, right, about the size of who you are, what Infosys today offers globally is a very expansive canvas for all of you, right? While you're held up today in Houston, maybe working with few oil majors, and imagine the canvas that you get in terms of Europe, the Asia-Pac, the India, the ANZ, the Japan, and then all of what you really would not have even imagined, right? And that is because as a company, we initially figured out that people is where we need to invest. You one of the key thing that we always look at people when we hire is the learnability. Because we frankly believe that the technology has changed, the domain changes, the challenges that the customer in the market puts us changes. So to that extent, we always prided that we want to bring in the best and the brightest, but the quotient of learnability has to be the highest because we want to make sure that we train people, retrain people. In fact, in my own career, God knows how many times the technologies have changed, but how do we continuously keep staying relevant, right? To that extent, for us, investing in people, both in terms of skills, nurturing their talent, trying to make sure that we create a very meritocratic organization. And believe me, Infosys never had a conglomerate with who actually funded us. It was middle class six individuals who actually pawned the wife's jewelries for $250, and that is how this dream of Infosys really started. And ladies and gentlemen, the reason I'm stating all of this is, you are all joining a very unique company, an icon of India, and in some sense today, globally. When we got listed in NASDAQ in 1999, there was no Indian company ever got listed. In fact, we took the entire Indian enterprise to the capital that they could actually tap in Americas, which nobody had even thought about. That meant the highest standards of accounting, highest standards of disclosure, highest standards of HR management. And in some ways, we set the benchmark for the corporates across, I would say in India, on what it really meant to be a bellwether, if you will, in terms of how the customers view it. And let me talk a little bit about our values, right? And I think we very dearly hold that. What we actually look at an acronym called as C-Life, right? It is C for customer centricity, L for leadership, by example, right? It's fairness, integrity, and excellence in everything that we do. It is just not excellence in the software we actually deliver, right? So to us, excellence meant in terms of how we treat people. And if you go back and look at our websites today, how we in fact even imagined the entire campuses that we build, how we really create a very open work culture in terms of not being hierarchical. To that extent, this is a phenomena or in some sense a heartbeat or a DNA of the organization that continuously keep ticking and make sure that we stay very close to what we are actually. A very humble, and extremely best at managing the customer expectation as well as employee expectations and in a way being very fair to all the society at large. The other key element of our organization is up to 2% of our net profit goes into what we call as Infosys Foundation. And we want to make sure that we give it back to the community with which we actually work. And this community is just not in India, but across the globe you would see right in Houston that there are a lot of programs today. Infoscions volunteer, as well as the organization funds in it, in some sense to really look at how do we really be more close to the community and how we give it back to the community as well and just not being a very corporate centric and profit centric organization. And finally, dear to all of us in the energy, is sustainability, right? Now we have been carbon neutral already from 2020 in scope one and two and three, right? And if you really look at our sustainability goals, which is perhaps the most audacious, in fact, even before anybody really thought about what sustainability was, we put the stake in the ground saying that our campuses will be sustainable, the energy that we do is sustainable, the water is recyclable, and everything and every aspect of what we do, we keep the environment and sustainability at the center of everything that we do. Well, as a large corporate, as you can imagine, we are about $19.5, $20 billion today in size. US accounts for about 60 to 61% of our overall revenue. Europe, last year, was the fastest growing geography, which about 30%. And of course, the rest of the world contributes, mainly the AsiaPac and a very small bit of work that we actually do in India to the rest of what we actually continue. Across, right, and Dash, a very dear colleague of mine, actually we were in partners actually to really make a case as to why MRE would be such a fantastic asset to us. You know, we both started long back in the organization building this entire SURE vertical and energy vertical. And in fact, our engagement with BP and quite a few of the oil majors actually started in some way to start doing this energy trading while we were so close but yet too far in terms of really making the difference. And talking to each one of our customers, we really felt there is a need for us to really bring in a complementary skill which would enhance the total value that we take to the customer. And my dear friends, I think, you know, as an organization, we really, really value what you bring to table. You know, this 80 to 90 of you really have to multiply multiple times, just not limited alone within the US, but you know, our plans are that this whole practice has to become global in nature and just not limit to US as well as into the Europe. But in a way, we want to really make sure the huge manpower talent that we have in India, we have to really look at how do we replicate and create thousands of people who really bring in this kind of capability to bear. And I can guarantee you, because when I've been, maybe this is my sixth or seventh acquisition that I've been in. And we are an organization which do understand that if anything goes on in your mind that this 800 pound gorilla of Infosys will never trample because we believe there is nimbleness in the organization. There is a reason that organizations are successful because it's a startup mindset that you all bring to table. We want to make sure that that core agility, the core culture never gets moved away, but in a sense, it actually starts blossoming and bloom and in a way becomes brighter with the canvas that Infosys really offers you. I wish you all the very best. We at Infosys today are very, very excited that all of you have joined us. And on behalf of the Infosys management, I want to extend a very warm welcome to all of you. And I wish you all the very best. And we really look forward as we put together our plans of integrating, looking at how do we bring offerings to the table, how do we really start engaging with the customer. And then more and more, you would start learning us, ourselves, and we would also start looking at who you are. And I will tell you, this journey, is going to be very exciting for each one of us and we'll have very many, many opportunities for us to interact and I'm sure that we will get to know a lot better. And I wish you all the very best here. Thank you so much. I really look forward to a bright future ahead.