Vishal Sikka, the first non-founding chief executive officer (CEO) of India's second-largest information technology (IT) services company Infosys, is going all out to understand and overcome the challenges surrounding the company as well as to establish a strong bond with the 160,000-odd employees there.

After spending time at several of the company's delivery locations in India over the past week and holding town hall discussions with employees, on Monday Sikka wrote to the company's staff seeking their views on how to improve Infosys.

Mumbai: The Infosys Foundation, the corporate social responsibility (CSR) arm of Infosys Ltd, India’s second largest software services exporter, has constituted a corpus fund of Rs30 crore for the Chennai Mathematical Institute (CMI).

This corpus will be used to enhance faculty compensation and support fellowship requirements for research students. In addition, the grant will enable CMI to invite distinguished mathematicians from across the world to mentor students and boost the institute’s quality of research, the company said in a statement.

BANGALORE: Infosys' newly appointed boss Vishal Sikka said the company will unveil its strategy by mid-October, even as he stressed on the importance of automation and the need to embrace design-thinking to drive growth.

Sikka mentioned the offsite the company's senior executives had at Stanford's Design School earlier in August, and said the management has had more than 20 meetings with clients and partners.

The start-up bug seems to have bitten large Indian information technology (IT) services companies.

Just a few weeks after a team from Wipro met and evaluated around 10 start-ups for a likely investment, Infosys, the country’s second largest IT services company, has also screened a handful of these. The idea was to explore an opportunity to either partner with or invest in.

While investors and observers closely watch for changes that the new leadership might bring about at Infosys, the Bangalore-based company is likely to announce its strategy by October.

Vishal Sikka, the new chief executive officer, is in the process of internally discussing and finalising the future course of action, chief operating officer U B Pravin Rao said on Tuesday.

Although the benchmark indices representing the bluechip and mid-cap space have sustained strong year to date gains this year, nearly half of the index members have underperformed these barometers.

In case of largecap indices — the fifty share Nifty and BSE 100 — that gained more than 26% in 2014, 45% of constituents have trailed the year to date gains reported by these respective indices.

Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka has been granted 22,794 restricted stock units (RSUs) at a price of Rs 5 per RSU, as part of his compensation structure. In a filing on the stock exchanges on Friday, Infosys said the RSUs will vest over a period of four years subject to continued employment and upon achieving key performance indicators as set by the board/management development and compensation committee from time to time.

Vishal Sikka keeps shaking his head to stop the steward from refilling his plate every time he shifts his attention to something else. "This is Indian culture. They want to pamper you, quite unlike in the US where you are expected to help yourself. You feel flattered, but you tend to gain fat as well," Infosys' new managing director and chief executive officer jokes during a lunch he hosted for the media on his first day in office on August 1.

A week into his new job, Infosys Chief Executive Vishal Sikka has promoted 5,000 employees, in an attempt to stop staff from leaving the Bangalore-based information technology services company.

Sources said the promotions, most of those on the delivery side of the business, would be handed out before October.

Even a weak rupee have not been able to save technology stocks from sharp selling in trade today. Shares of Infosys , TCS , Wipro , HCL Tech and Tech Mahindra fell 2-3 percent intraday on Wednesday as Cognizant’s lowering its guidance sparked fears about a growth slowdown of the entire sector.

The Nasdaq-listed IT firm slashed its growth guidance for the full year from 16.5 percent to 14 percent. Higher IT spending in North America and Europe helped the company clock 16.5 percent rise in quarterly revenue and net income rose to USD 371.9 million from USD 300.4 million, a year ago.

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