Tags:
Journalism of Courage
The founder of Infosys Ltd and Indian IT industry icon N R Narayana Murthy,who returned from retirement as executive chairman this month,has given himself three years to turn around the fortunes of the company that was not too long back considered the bellwether of the Indian software sector.
The performance of Infosys has sagged over the last two years and Murthy warned painful decisions would be taken to revive it.
Murthy,66,whose return to Infosys board of directors received official shareholder sanction at the companys 32nd annual general body meeting Saturday,said the task of rebuilding a desirable Infosys will take at least 36 months.
In the process,there will be some tough decisions resulting in pain as we move forward, said Murthy,who received plenty of adulation and a bit of criticism at the AGM for returning to steer the company after retiring at the age of 65 in August 2011.
Murthy,who had earlier this month desisted from pointing out where Infosys was going wrong over the last two years under the leadership of non-executive chairman K V Kamath,co-chairman Kris Gopalakrishnan and CEO S D Shibulal,spoke at some length on what he felt were the problem areas.
He said the companys loss of focus on its bread-and-butter revenue strategy of winning highly competitive,large revenue-yielding outsourcing projects involving application development,maintenance,testing,BPO and infrastructure management had hurt the firm.
In an indirect admission of the failing of the companys much touted Infosys 3.0 strategy for tackling an increasingly commoditised global IT market,Murthy said Infosys had focused too much on consulting-led total IT solution deals and development of original IT solutions over big outsourcing deals.
During the last two years,our focus on the third stream was blurred. We have to focus on this,our bread-and-butter business in the short term8230;, Murthy said.
