Infosys not doing any layoffs; RBS deal may not be one-off case: Vishal Sikka

Seeking to assure the company’s employees, Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka has said that the IT major is “not doing any layoffs”. Speaking at the Infosys’ analysts meet, Sikka said he hopes to see a decrease in attrition in the high-performance segment. “Every employee at Infosys is valuable. There is no involuntary attrition.” Sikka’s comments come in the backdrop of buzz that mute Q1 results and the loss of RBS contract has led to around 500 people suffering job losses at the IT major. Infosys on its part has sought to clarify that the people had been asked to leave based on ‘non-performance’.

On the topic of guidance, he was cautious saying, “There are uncertainties across sectors, geographies. An accurate picture on the guidance will emerge post Q2 earnings. We did not see the RBS ramp down coming at the start of the quarter. We are seeing softness in some clients, post Brexit, now which was not anticipated at the start of Q2.” “We want to see if the RBS is a one-off case or there are more like RBS,” Sikka added.

Earlier this month RBS had said it will no longer pursue its plan to separate and list a new UK standalone bank, Williams & Glyn (W&G). Infosys was the W&G programme technology partner for consulting, application delivery and testing services. While reports had suggested that as many as 3,000 Infosys staff would be affected after this, the company had said the employees will be absorbed in other projects over the course of the next few months.

Talking about Infosys’ clients, Sikka said, “Clients are facing cost pressure due to technological disruption. We have seen softness from clients in other parts of the world. The kind of conversations we have with clients is not strategic.” “The level of engagement with top, strategic clients has been improving in the last 6-12 months,” he said.

Stating that the company continues to see “healthy deal pipeline”, Sikka added, “We are using MANA for large deals. MANA can help increase productivity.” “There are bigger opportunities to be looked at with MANA. I agree that it is affecting some existing platforms,” he said. MANA is a knowledge-based Artificial Intelligence platform of Infosys.

Expressing happiness at the rate of progress of Infosys, Sikka said, “The market share and deal pipeline continue to remain very strong….Our consulting business saw a decline in Q1…We need to relook at old processes….We have to be cautious that large deals take time to ramp up.” Sikka feels that there is little doubt that automation is the future of the industry.