Indian IT giants bidding for British tech consultancy: Report

LONDON: Two Indian IT giants are in the fray to acquire British tech consultancy Axon, media reports said on Sunday.

According to a report, Infosys had made a 407 million pounds bid for Axon but its Indian rival HCL trumped it up by offering 441 million pounds.

On Friday Axon said it was backing HCL. Infosys shares, listed in Mumbai and New York, slumped.

"One of our strategies is to reduce our dependence on America and to increase our revenues from Europe and the rest of the world. We also want to do more value-added services, and we want to leverage the customer base. So this acquisition has to meet multiple strategic objectives," said Kris Gopalakrishnan, chief of Infosys to the newspaper.

In view of HCL bid, Infosys might jack up its bid, the report said.

Gopalakrishnan said "We're now consciously growing Europe. Today our revenues are 60 per cent America, 30 per cent Europe, 10 per cent rest of the world. We want to take it to 40-40-20."

British firms like Axon make a good start. Axon specialises in serving software developed by the German firm SAP and advise clients such as Vodafone and Barclays on implementation.

Infosys, employing 95,000, has made only one overseas acquisition before - in Australia five years ago - and prefers growing organically. Its main experience of employing Europeans is an outsourcing deal with Philips that saw it take on 700 employees in Poland.