Need to do something like Accenture or Cognizant, says Vishal Sikka

The IT giant is looking for acquisitions but for innovative reasons instead of revenue priorities, said its CEO & MD

Vishal Sikka, the managing director and chief executive of Infosys, has said the firm is aiming to do something similar to Accenture or Cognizant on acquisitions, without blindly copying.

Addressing a conference by equity analyst firm Motilal Oswal on Tuesday, Sikka said acquisitions would be a focus area and will help the company to achieve its 2020 vision.

“If you look at the number of the companies Accenture has bought or even Cognizant, there is obviously a very systematic and highly efficient way in which they execute all these things,” Sikka said.

“I think we need to do something like this as well. Not to copy them but I think the rate at which interesting innovation is built outside is something that has to be adopted and embraced.”

In this year, Infosys has made two acquisitions.

One is of Israel-based automation technology solutions provider Panaya and the other of US-based mobile e-commerce solutions provider Skava.

The company expects acquisitions to account for around 7.5 per cent of the $20 billion revenue it has aspired to corner by 2020.

“When I talk about the $20 bn by 2020 and 30 per cent margin and $80,000 revenue per employee, the way we break down the $20 bn top line is that we would like to get $1.5 bn out of that through acquisition. This means, through acquisitions that we make between now and then, we would like to have $1.5 bn of the $20 bn in revenue. And, I do not believe in making big acquisitions, multi-billion dollar acquisitions, of companies that were interesting in the past,” he added.