We want to be a bellwether again; will get into 18% growth in long term: Vishal Sikka, CEO, Infosys

Vishal Sikka’s first earnings presentation as Infosys CEO was centred on the themes of automation, artificial intelligence and ‘design thinking,’ the latter phrase that describes a creative, user-centred approach to problem-solving. Sikka also addressed questions on some long-standing issues and investor concerns. Excerpts:

On Automation And Artificial Intelligence

I want to make a big mention of automation. Artificial intelligence as a domain is not very well understood. It is often associated with precipitating... the irrelevance of humanity. Having studied at Stanford and other places at the feet of the pioneers of this domain, I see the word fundamentally differently.

Technology has always been about the amplification of the human be ing. About augmenting them with new capabilities, not about making them irrelevant.

On Design Thinking

We are starting Design Thinking training in a massive way . We have already done sessions for many of our leaders, for example in consulting and our sales leadership, together with Stanford University's d.school (design school). We are putting together a very large design thinking training session for all Infosys employees at Mysore as well as our development centres. This will help us train tens of thousands of Infosys employees on Design Thinking over the next few months.

On Target Margins

It is too early to forecast that, but based on the strategy that I have articulated, we should be able to get into 15-18% growth in the long term, and 25-28% margins. I see no reason why, over a long term, we couldn't achieve such numbers.

On Acquisitions

The key idea is to not acquire yesterday's products and services companies, but to acquire capabilities and skills of tomorrow that help us grow in areas that are strategic to us.Beyond the technology and the skills, we also want to use the inorganic strategy to get into some other penetrative but high-growth areas, and some geographies, where acquisitions can help us achieve our objectives faster.

On Working With Startups

Infosys can enable startups to attain great engineering speed, scale and global reach by helping them amplify their development at the right moment, combined with joint go-tomarket where we can help bring startups to our clients. Strategic investment from our $100-million venture fund, to help bring Infosys into close collaboration with today's startups, will lead to great companies of the future.

On Sales Team

We do see meaningful changes on the sales front. Our sales team is actively engaged in renewing its own capabilities through both reskilling and retraining, and bringing in new talent. We have already done Design Thinking training sessions with our sales players.

On Finacle

Our Finacle business did not have such a great quarter, and posted a 5.4% decline in quarter-on-quarter revenue. We just announced a leadership change for this unit, and we will be executing plans on several dimensions to return this business to growth and success.

On Renewing Business Lines

When we think about renewing the landscape, we believe that everyone, in every business, in every industry, needs to renew their existing systems and processes, and for Infosys this means a renewal of our existing business lines.

On Offering Next Gen Services

Every service that we offer today will be renewed on the basis of innovation, automation and improvements in process efficiency . As such there is no old or new service. It is simply an old way or a new way of doing the same services. In addition to renewing the services that we have today , we believe that there is an additional need for new kinds of technology such as new kinds of platforms for new data, machine learning, big data and so forth.