Infosys targets $1 bn revenue in 3-4 yrs from India

With its key export market US yet to show any signs of revival, Infosys today said it would bid for all big government projects in the country and would target $1 billion (Rs 5,000 crore) revenue from India in the next 3-4 years.

"We are now going after the large government projects, deals which are over Rs 200 crore. We are targetting a billion dollar revenue from the services business in India in 3-4 years time-frame," Binod H R, senior VP and head of India Business Unit, Infosys, told PTI.

The Nasdaq-listed IT exporter's rival TCS had also earlier said that it was expecting $1 billion revenue from India over the next 3-4 years.

"We are going after both government and private projects in the IT services business. But it is going to be 90 per cent ...government (projects), while 10 per cent from the private sector."

Most of the growth would right now come from the government sector as private sector has already made a lot of investment in IT. Probably, they would go a little slow on the investment at this moment due to recession, Binod said.

He said revenue from India is very low at the moment. The company has bid for the IT pilot projects of the railways.

Infosys's India business is fairly new that was started at 2007-end and is a separate business unit. Earlier, he had said that the firm had taken a conscious decision not to participate in the local market.

"We are late into this (Indian) market but the company will catch up," he said.

He further said, "We would like to participate in large deals of ministries of Power, Railways, IndiaPost, Telecom, Commerce and Finance, where a lot of repetitive things can happen across the states.

Recently, the company completed a mission mode project for the Commerce Ministry.

On the Unique Identification project, he said once the details are out, we will evaluate and see we have the strengths to bid for it like any other project. If we think we have the capability, surely we will go for it.

On the specific upcoming projects, he said, "Big projects are coming up in the Ministry of Power...We will participate in some of the states for the power projects.

"We are already consultants to three states -- Rajasthan, MP and UP -- which excludes us from bidding for the implementation of the projects. So it opens us to 26 states where we can bid. So we will bid selectively in some of the states".

The Ministries of Railways and Defence are expected to put some large projects up for bidding soon.

Infosys has manufacturing logistics services, banking and financial, telecom and Government, services among others and India business caters to all the verticals.

At the moment, retail vertical is going slow due to slowdown and government, energy utility and telecom are our strongest verticals, he said.