Infy to make maiden start-up investment

Infosys, India's second largest information technology (IT) services company, is in advanced talks with the Nasdaq-listed DreamWorks Animation to invest in one of its spin-off start-up ventures that develops collaboration tools and technologies.

This will be Infosys' first investment from its innovation fund dedicated to start-ups and emerging technologies.

"We are close to announcing our investment in DreamWorks Animation," U B Pravin Rao, chief operating officer of Infosys, told Business Standard. "We are in advanced talks with them and the idea is to take some of their technologies to our global clients," he added. The investment Infosys plans to make in DreamWorks Animation could not be ascertained.

Infosys is working with Clique Intelligence, a spin-off of DreamWorks Animation, to help commercialise its collaboration tools. Delivering a keynote address at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco in October last year, Infosys Chief Executive Officer Vishal Sikka had said the technology of Clique Intelligence was unique because of the nature of work in the animation industry.

"A typical animated movie has half a billion files in it. So, the collaboration tools they put together for their own employees to make these movies... we are now helping them commercialise this," Sikka had said.

Since his appointment last year, Sikka has repeatedly stressed on Infosys' intent to engage with innovative start-ups. Among the first things Infosys did after Sikka's appointment in August 2014 was set up an innovation fund on the lines of venture capital funds run by global technology firms Microsoft and Intel. The initial corpus of the fund was $100 million but Infosys increased it to $500 million earlier this month.

Infosys' move is in line with competitor's Wipro's decision to set up a venture capital arm headed by its Chief Strategy Officer Rishad Premji. Wipro has been scouting for startups in the country but has not announced any investment.

Last week, Sikka said Infosys was looking at assigning a leader to manage the fund and the company would disclose how the fund would function over the following weeks.

"The shift that is happening in the industry is much more dramatic than we have seen in the past. We can't look at building all capabilities internally as that will take time. We have to work with companies that offer them," Rao said.

Infosys is also looking at acquisitions in advanced technology areas like artificial intelligence, automation, analytics and big data. Recently, the company announced the appointment of Ritika Suri, former senior vice-president of SAP who joined Infosys last year, as head of mergers and acquisitions.

When peers like Cognizant and Wipro were actively tapping inorganic growth, Infosys remained conservative on acquisitions. Infosys' last significant acquisition was in 2012 when it bought the Switzerland-based Lodestone Management Consultants for $345 million.