'Infosys not moving out of Bengal now'

Infosys Technologies has said it was not moving its West Bengal project out of the state at this point in time and was not planning to set up new facilities.

The company would focus only on expanding its existing facilities at an investment of around Rs 600 crore, said S Gopalakrishnan, chief executive officer and managing director.

Speaking to Business Standard on the sidelines of Connect 2009, a two-day ICT event organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry, he said, “The project (in West Bengal) has run into trouble. We are also going slow due to the global economic slowdown.”

“We have decided to go slow on new projects and will focus only on expanding our existing facilities.”

He said around 3.5 million sft of infrastructure was being developed in the company’s existing facilities in Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Pune. “Our capex for this year will be Rs 600 crore.”

The West Bengal government recently said it “cannot proceed” with the proposed Kolkata Link IT township project near Rajarhat in North 24 Parganas district following allegations of land grabbing and the recent arrest of the managing director of a firm that is a private partner.

On acquisition plans, Gopalakrishnan said there were always 12-15 deals in the pipeline and that the company’s large deals would have a combined value of $50 million. “We will invest 10 per cent of our revenue, or $200-500 million, for acquisitions.”

“The company is looking at Germany, France and non-English geographies. Consulting, BPO and healthcare are the major segments we are looking at,” he said. The company would recruit 2,000 people against its initial target of 18,000 for the current year.

Stating that with no sign of a rise in margins, he said it would take some more time to reach the 2007-08 level. “Banking, financial services and insurance have started showing recovery due to the stimulus packages from the government, but manufacturing is lagging due to slowdown in the automotive industry,” he said.

“We are not able to predict short-term growth, but medium and long-term (three-five years) growth will be 10-20 per cent,” he said.