Infosys has no plans to engage with any Russian company: CEO Salil Parekh

Infosys CEO Salil Parekh on Wednesday said that the IT bellwether has no plans to engage with any Russian business or enterprise going forward and that the company is in the process of transitioning its services out of the country.

Parekh said that the Infosys has 100 employees working in Russia office.
 
“We intend not to work with Russian companies going ahead. Our current work in Russia was related to some global clients who had a presence in the country,” Parekh said in response to a question during the Q4FY22 earnings press conference. He denied to comment over the reports of the company management being under pressure from Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy and his daughter Akshata Murty, who too has a small stake in the company.
 
To put this into context, according to a Guardian newspaper report, Akshata Murty’s husband, and UK Chancellor, Rishi Sunak was facing constant pressure over allegations that his family is benefitting from the Infosys’s continued operations in Russia.
 
Meanwhile, on the impact of geo-political tensions amid Russia-Ukraine conflict, Parekh said that there has been no substantial impact on the company’s revenues, deal pipeline and services demand. He added that the company has already donated $1 million humanitarian aid across Europe and will also scale its operations in Eastern Europe countries including Poland and Romania.
 
Infosys CEO also said that the global inflationary prices are unlikely to cast its impact on tech spending by enterprises and that the company continues to see a robust demand environment in areas like cloud, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.

With respect to the recently announced Infosys Metaverse Foundry, Parekh said that the communication is going on with the clients in manufacturing, retail sectors on how the various offerings can be used for enhanced client engagements and that the management is working out the plan to deploy its assets for assisting enterprises.

Attrition likely to flatten over net few months

Meanwhile, Infosys Chief Financial Officer, Nilanjan Roy said that he expects the current high attrition rate to flatten in next few months especially with freshers coming onboard. The company has onboarded 85,000 freshers in FY22 and plans to hire 50,000 college graduates in FY23 . Although the attrition fell by 5 basis points in Q4, FY22, the IT services giant reported a record attrition of 27.7% for FY22.
 
Roy said that the process of onboarding and training the freshers requires a timeline of 2-3 months , however the company has been able to mitigate the supply challenge and meet the demands of the clients.  Infosys reported a $9.5 billion deal pipeline for Q4, FY22.