Infosys is confident that the significant investments made to make the company more resilient and agile would help it overcome the fallout from the global economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, Chairman Nandan Nilekani told shareholders on Saturday.
“These investments have positioned us very well and this is demonstrated in the way we are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Combining the scale, brand, and relationships of a large company with the speed, responsiveness, and agility of a start-up, we are confident of tiding through this global crisis,” asserted Mr. Nilekani.
“We have already pivoted our resources to the new needs of our clients and strengthened our expertise in cloud, workplace transformation and smart automation to be able to help them accelerate and scale their digital endeavours,” Mr. Nilekani added.
Observing that clients were dealing with several challenges, Mr. Nilekani said retailers had been hit hard in the non-grocery, apparel, lifestyle and fashion sections. Travel and hospitality had also greatly slumped.
In its effort to help clients cope, Infosys had been building more flexible supply chains to urgently enhance e-commerce offerings and supporting new models of employee experience “to accelerate recovery and resilience”. “Technology is essential to get it all working, the efficiencies of automation to make it viable, and experiential design to unlock more value from this work,” he added.
The Board recommended a final dividend of ₹9.5 per share, Mr. Nilekani said.
‘Some negative impact’
In the near term, Infosys expects “some overall negative impact” from the disruptions caused by the pandemic, CEO and MD Salil Parekh told shareholders. “But in the medium to long term, we see opportunities for clients as they fast-track their digital transformation journey and consolidation of vendors.”
He also allayed fears over the Trump administration’s visa curbs. “We have over 60% of our employees who are independent of any visa situation,” Mr. Parekh said.
The IT firm said that it had enabled 93% of its more than 2.4 lakh employees, across 46 countries, to work from home in just a few weeks.
