Vishal Sikka has recently completed three years as CEO of Indian IT giant Infosys and is more determined than ever to touch the $20 billion sales figure by 2020.
Sikka was roped into Infosys in 2014 to help transform and elevate the company at a time of significant and rapid advancements in the field of technology.
Being in line with the company's aspiration, Infosys had hit the $10 billion milestone in January under Sikka's guidance. For 2016-17, revenues grew 9.7 percent to Rs 68,484 crore and 8.3 percent in constant currency terms.
Keeping his dual strategy in mind, Sikka has not only taken efficient measures to renew the traditional business with automation, but has also managed to come up with new businesses around digital technologies like cloud, artificial intelligence, and the Internet-of-things.
In the last couple of years, the company has performed very well in top accounts, and the number of $800 million plus accounts has risen to 19. Sikka takes pride in the development and aims to focus more on large deals in the years to come.
For the quarter ended March 31, 2017, the CEO of the IT major said that about 10 percent of the company's revenues that quarter came from new services and software. Infosys also launched a platform called Nia to help clients embrace artificial intelligence (AI). He added, "Nia continues to be central to all our conversations with clients as we work with them to transform their businesses."
The company's website describes Infosys Nia as an artificial intelligence platform that collects and aggregates organisational data from people, processes and legacy systems into a self-learning knowledge base and then automates repetitive business and IT processes, freeing up the human effort to solve higher-value customer problems that require creativity, passion and imagination.
Many Infosys clients have already deployed Nia, which is helping them leverage their organisational knowledge and determine opportunities to optimise, simplify, and automate complex business processes.
Sikka considers AI and new software like Nia, Skava, Panaya and Edge systems as high growth areas for the company's future, and focus points to keep the wheels of innovation running.
Last month, he unveiled the indigenous "driverless golf car" at the company's Bengaluru campus. The idea behind this development is to train employees on artificial intelligence platforms, which the company deems to be the future of business. These driverless vehicles have sensors in place to read their immediate environment and navigate without human effort.
In the past three years of his tenure, Vishal Sikka has managed to keep the benchmark of innovation high by implementing his dual strategy. However, industry players say that it is important for Infosys to acquire deeper digital capabilities to keep competitors in check. Sikka and team should focus on strengthening its M&A faction to get hands on companies that can provide Infosys with the needed technological support to help Sikka achieve his mission of developing new businesses using new software.
