Infosys Technologies is investing an additional $10 million to further globalise its banking solutions product Finacle, besides expanding its sales force in Europe and Asia Pacific for banking products.
The Bangalore-based IT company is also leading a 'talent leadership war' by hiring people at rapid pace by adding 2305 in the first quarter of this fiscal alone, Infosys officials told an analysts meeting held in Chennai on Monday.
"This year we are investing an additional $10 million in Finacle," said Girish G Vaidya, president & head, banking business unit, Infosys Technologies.
Vaidya said Infosys' strategy was to have more feet on the ground globally for its e-banking products. In addition to expanding sales force in Europe and Asia-Pacific, there will also be 'substantial increase in our engineering and domain teams to fast track product development activities,' he said.
Vaidya said the annual size of the market for Infosys banking products was $1 billion. The banking business unit, which had just 193 employees and two products, has grown to 860 employees with six products. The new product offerings include the Web-based cash management and wealth management.
"While we dominate the Indian market, we have further consolidated our position in West Africa. We dominate the e-banking space in South Africa too by clinching five out of five deals in the last 24 months," he said.
"We believe we are well on our way to consolidate our position as a leading tech partner for banks worldwide," Vaidya said.
S Gopalakrishnan, chief operating officer and deputy managing director, said the company was leading a 'talent leadership war,' adding 9,000 employees in fiscal 2004 and the trend continues this fiscal too.
After the end of the first quarter of 2004-05, the total employee strength of Infosys stands at 27,939, compared to 25,634 in 2003-04 fiscal-end.
Infosys is also adding more million-dollar clients. In the last two quarters, the company has added three $50 million clients each, Gopalakrishnan said.
In the first quarter of last fiscal, the company had no $50 million clients.
Nandan M Nilekani, CEO and MD, said Infosys was leveraging on global multi-cultural talent pools in Australia, China, Mauritius, et cetera. Stating that scalability was key to rapid growth of the company, Nilekani said Infosys was ideally positioned to scale up its client relationship, global infrastructure and talent management divisions.
On its Asia-Pacific operatios, V.Sriram, vice president and head (APAC region), said 10 per cent of Infosys revenues come from the region. While $20.9 million comes from Australia, Japan contributes $10.7 million, he said.
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