Growth to continue despite macro tensions: Infosys Chairman Nandan Nilekani

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Infosys chairman Nandan Nilekani said he is confident of cost takeout deals and discretionary spends among clients. According to him, market share gains will continue despite macroeconomic tensions even as companies adapt to technology disruption.

 

Nilekani admitted that artificial intelligence (AI), with all its possibilities and potential, creates an arc of uncertainty but he did not view it as a threat. And, neither are global capability centres (GCCs), according to him.

 

“AI and GCCs are the new waves of growth and not threats. It is all about the innovation arbitrage. We do not see them as competitors. GCCs are also clients for us,” Nilekani said at the company’s 44th annual general meeting (AGM) on Wednesday.

 

Infosys has, however, singled out GCCs as a key/ emerging risk in its annual report.

 

“Customers looking inwards by insourcing or establishing or expanding GCCs for various services provided by us may result in loss of addressable market share, thus impacting overall growth and profitability,” it has cautioned.

 

Nilekani further added, “Financial year 2025 has been a strong one for Infosys in terms of execution in these times of uncertainty.” 

 

Impact of tariffs, a slow global economy and geopolitical tensions across the world have cast a shadow of great uncertainty among all and the IT sector is not immune to that.

 

While banking financial services and insurance (BFSI) has shown some green shoots in the US, manufacturing is expected to face headwinds in the near term, especially in Europe.  

 

“Such uncertainties are unlike anything we have seen in recent times with the world viewed not as a single global market but fragmented blocks. Supply chain diversification is needed and legacy system modernisation has to be ensured. We need AI foundries for innovation and AI factories for scaling,” Nilekani said at the AGM.

 

That will also mean upskilling and reskilling employees. Infosys said it has trained about 175,000 of its employees with some AI skills and 20,000 of its engineers use Github.

 

Employees with basic AI skills are known as AI-aware inside the company.

 

It is also in the process to increase the number of AI-builders – people who use models that are available on Cloud – and AI masters – who can build such foundational models.