Infosys lauds staff achievements

Infosys Technologies on Thursday recognised the contributions of its employees, not only to the company but to the community as well, at the Infosys Awards for Excellence.

The awards, which are entering their tenth year, have grown from merely three winners in one category in 1995 to 336 winners in 14 categories, which were simultaneously awarded at all nine Infosys Development Centres in India.

Infosys chief mentor N R Narayana Murthy presented the awards to the winners, who were recognised in various fields including technology champions, customer delight and social consciousness.

"An Infoscion brings much more to the table than simply their technical expertise. They also bring leadership and social awareness. This event is about recognising them for their contributions, in and out of the office, which allows Infosys to create an extraordinary work environment that fosters the outstanding achievements we have witnessed this evening."

Winners of the Social Consciousness Award included Akanksha, a group of Infoscions from the Bhubaneswar Development Center recognised for their contributions to the community that included organising blood donation camps, training 23 software instructors and providing health insurance to 35 orphan children.

"I met the other members of my team when I started working at Infosys. I didn't think that I would find IT professionals so passionate about both their jobs and their communities, but we have been able to continuously excel both as employees and citizens," said the Akanksha member.

Some of the other recipients of the award included Nithya Prabhakar of Mangalore who was awarded the Value Champion Award which recognises Infoscions who make extraordinary efforts to aid their community.

Prabhakar, while traveling to Chennai, helped 32 passengers, which included a critical kidney transplant patient and a team of surgeons traveling to Chennai to perform a heart surgery, who were stranded at Bhubaneswar Airport.

Prabhakar was able to convince the authorities as well as the aviation minister to redirect a flight leaving for Kolkata to make an unscheduled stop to pick up the stranded passengers.