Infosys Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director Kris Gopalakrishnan on Thursday advised companies and businesses to tap other geographies like Japan, Australia, Gulf and the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) as the European economies were witnessing severe stress.
Mr. Gopalakrishnan was buoyant that the overall economic growth was fast returning to normalcy with top companies registering encouraging growth rates, but the European crisis had turned out to be a cause for concern. “The fluctuation in the European currencies which are depreciating has become a concern for industry as a whole and the substantial stimulus announced by the European Union hopefully improves the situation, not precipitates it,” he said.
While the turnaround of the economies was the positive side, very low single digit growth in the developed countries, the U.S. expected to grow at 2 per cent and the EU less than one per cent, was the negative side of the crisis. “We are encouraging our members to look at the opportunities in countries other than North America and Europe,” Mr. Gopalakrishnan, who is also the CII Southern Region Chairman, told reporters here.
Stressing the need for the companies to diversify into other regions, he said companies needed to look at developing countries so that their business continued to be uniform. “It may not be possible immediately and will take some time,” he said.
On the Infosys' plans, he said the company was looking at ensuring 40:40:20-exposure for the North American, Europe and the rest of the world markets, respectively, from the current situation of 62:13:25.
He said the second campus in Hyderabad was almost ready and Infosys had no rethinking on that. The existing facility spread over 50 acres was full and the first building of the second campus was designed to accommodate 5,000 people.
