Infosys' Nilekani: Battle of Business Models

The CEO of Infosys, Nandan Nilekani has an interview with the NY Times this week.  The co-founder of Infosys has to be given a lot of credit for putting Infosys and Indian offshoring on the global map. Also admirable to see an executive of a company valued at $ 20 b only takes cash comp of $ 60K a year.

But as I read the interview, I got a sense of "hubris". Infosys revenues are less than 5% of those of IBM Global Services, less than 10% of EDS, less than 15 % of Accenture.  And Nandan says "their business models" need to change? These firms still own the customer relationships. Infosys is much better known on Wall Street than Main street. And when you get to a German strasse or a French rue or a Japanese chome, his and other Indian firms are even less known (and as he knows those markets are far less open than the US).

He says Western providers do 100% of their work in one location. Wait till they come up with the next wave of offshoring - multi-country - seamless between India, China, Brazil and E. Europe. The Indian vendors will look far more risk concentrated.

As I written before, Southwest Airlines is a good role model for offshore vendors like Infosys. Even after 30 years of continuous profitability, Southwest focuses more on its own unique "masala" than the weaknesses of its competitors.

The beauty of Infosys and other offshore firms in the past was they delivered superb quality at ridiculous prices - like Southwest. Today, they cannot compete against internal staff economics. Their customer satisfaction metrics are dropping .They do not own 90% of the customer channel. 

Nandan has seen the industry evolve over the last 2 decades. He is a long-term survivor. He knows it's too early to declare victory. And how he continues to acquire and delight clients matters more than what Accenture does or does not do.

Comments

[Angelique van Engelen]

Cool stuff there. I was reading your article with a view to finding out just what the general pooha about outsourcing is about and guess what now I know what to look out for in the second wave of this action!

I am on the prowl for Dutch companies interested in outsourcing to Africa and find that the scene is rife with people who are somewhat happy with their IT outsourcing exercises to believe it or not Indians. I guess the bridge India Kenya is rather short anyway.

Cheers,
Angelique van Engelen

[vinnie mirchandani]

thanks...I have flown from Kenya to India ...a long time ago.

India is a good role model for many developing countries. But important to remember the Indian software industry was almost completely entrepreneurial with only real govt support in form of tax breaks but the Indian firms had to build their own telecomm, real estate, back up power and other infrastructure.