Infosys Banking Business Unit Hoists Indian Operations

The Indian operations of Infosys Technologies has sprung a pleasant surprise in the just announced results for the first quarter of this financial year.

It has contributed the highest in terms of growth percentage from various geographies in which Infosys operates and has shown a whopping growth of 67 per cent. This has increased the Indian contribution to Infosys' coffers from 1.7 per cent in the last quarter of financial year 2000-01 to about 2.6 per cent in the first quarter of the year under consideration.

The explosive growth has been fuelled solely by the banking business unit of the company and through its newly launched core banking product Finacle. In India Infosys does not offer any software solutions or services and is focussed only on retailing its financial product portfolio which consists of the enterprise banking products Finacle, BankAway, and Bancsconnect.

Infosys Technologies, senior vice-president, banking business unit, Girish Vaidya, said the growth was led more by the absence of any relevant technology in the Indian banking industry as well as the need for medium and large banks across India to embrace technology where none existed before.

The company has clearly established a lead in the Indian market with eight out of nine deals signed by banks in India for technology deals going Infosys' way. In the quarter Infosys has added Punjab National Bank, to its growing number of Indian clients which has decided to deploy the enterprise banking e-platform -- Finacle, BankAway, Bancsconnect.

The banking industry in India according to Vaidya was suddenly realising that they are sitting on a lot of data which could potentially drive business and fuel growth in sale of products. "In India the banking industry largely does not have a centralised technology system which consolidates data while in developed countries one comes across legacy systems".

The fact that Infosys is serious about its only product offering for the financial industry can be seen from the fact that the Banking Business Unit has opened its own office in Latin America with an office in Argentina.

Additionally, the sales from its product portfolio have grown at a very aggressive 50 per cent in a single quarter considering the fact that there is a recession in the US and tech spending is at an all time low.