Continued investment in education sector, allocation for development of infrastructure and investment in technology to improve e-governance were the three key areas that the coming Budget should lay focus on, Kris Gopalakrishnan, Infosys chief executive officer, said in Thiruvananthapuram on Thursday."My request to the government is to focus on development of infrastructure, including education and improvement of governance in the coming Budget," Gopalakrishnan said, addressing a press conference.
He said the service tax and income tax problems being faced by companies should also be resolved by making processes simple so that business friction was reduced.
India would become the important centre for IT services in the next five to 10 years.
"We have a growing pool of engineering talent. If we had 400,000 engineers coming out annually 10 years back, the number now is 14 lakhs (1.4 million)," he said.
No other country, except China, was growing at this rate. In United Sates, the sector was stagnating. Infosys was focussing on emerging markets like India, China, Mexico, Brazil, West Asia, Australia and Japan, he said.
Gopalakrishnan said 63 per cent of Infosys' business was centred in North America, 23 percent in Europe and 14 per cent in the rest of the world.
"Our target market is large businesses like banks, financial services, retailers and transportation logistic companies.
"Infosys is projected to grow faster in the coming year. But still, clouds are there,"
he said, citing unrest in West Asia, growing unemployment in the developed world and volatility in financial markets which were challenges for any business.
"If the global economy slows down, this industry will also slow down," he said. Stating that he was an optimist, Gopalakrishnan said there about 240,000 recruitments across the IT industry last year and it would continue be around 200,000 this year also.
Gopalakrishnan said the Infosys centre in Thiruvananthapuram had fetched Rs 440 crore (Rs 4.4 billion) revenue in the first nine months of the current fiscal and revenue was growing at 30 per cent annually.
"Though it is a small beginning here, there is great opportunity for the centre to continue to grow. We have got quality employees here and the quality of work is also good."
The centre was doing a lot of work on mobile technology, digital commerce and enterprise mobility, he said.
The company officials had visited 24 campuses in Kerala last year and had already made 1,600 offers.
The annual ITES exports from Kerala was currently worth Rs 2,400 crore (Rs 24 billion) which was not a small amount, he said.
On the general perception that Kerala was not an investor-friendly state, he said the company's experience had always been positive.
Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi were among the top ten IT destinations in the country for their attractiveness, Gopalakrishnan said.
