How Infosys plans to earn $20 billion revenue

Design thinking refers to solving traditional tech problems using newer, different and innovative methods

Infosys has trained about one lakh employees on 'design thinking' as the country's second largest software services firm looks to ramp up revenues from new technology areas.

"We have just finished training about 100,000 of Infosys employees on design thinking. My sense is we are entering a time when everyone will be expected to innovate because increasingly the work that we do, that can be specified, that can be articulated, will be done by AI," Infosys CEO and MD Vishal Sikka said at Citi Global Technology Conference 2016.

He added that the "new frontier" in such a scenario then becomes problem finding and not just problem solving.

Design thinking refers to solving traditional tech problems using newer, different and innovative methods.

The Bengaluru-based company, which has set an aspirational goal of achieving $20 billion revenue by 2020, is betting on new services like design thinking, solutions in artificial intelligence (AI) and intellectual property-led businesses to contribute at least 10 per cent of Infosys' revenue by then.

According to Infosys 2015-16 annual report, six of its board members, including chairman R Seshasayee, former Cornell University professor Jeffrey S Lehman and Biocon chief Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, have gone through "immersion sessions" where they were trained on design thinking and industry/market and technology trends.

Sikka said if IT companies can work with clients on areas that they find most strategic and innovate, "margins and profits follow from there".

"...there is no shortage of higher margin kinds of offerings in new areas, digital areas, digitisation of existing physical artifacts and so forth," he added.

Taking a dig at competitors without naming them, Sikka said, "a lot of companies in our industry claim digital revenues and even implementation of salesforce.com or mobile websites and so forth is somehow digital revenue".

"I don't understand why it is digital. People often ask me how much of Infosys revenues are digital and I tell them 100 per cent of it is digital because we write software for digital computer," he quipped.

Photograph: Punit Paranjpe/Reuters