Infosys marches in pursuit of USD 20-billion revenue

New Delhi: Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka is working on making employees "more confident" and "creatively innovative" as the country's second largest IT firm marches ahead on its pursuit of USD 20-billion in annual revenue by 2020.

From its earlier formal attire-only to casuals on weekdays now, it isn't just the dress code that Sikka, Infosys' first non-founding CEO brought in. "When I started, there was a lot of anxiety... people were wondering where they were going.

So, I decided in those first couple of months that the first order of business was to stabilise things and make everyone feel better, find a way to re-ignite the confidence of the people," Sikka told PTI.

He added that the "creative confidence" in the teams has improved significantly and that makes him "really proud more than anything else". Illustrating this, Sikka spoke of how the 'zero distance' project that was started in 2015 has helped in a major way in building confidence levels of the employees.

At the beginning, employees had to be prepared and they would give presentations at these meetings but now, with even a three-hour notice, employees can walk up without any slides and talk confidently about their discussions with clients, he shared.

The zero distance initiative -- a programme to get Infoscions to develop new ideas and improvements on every project to create a culture of innovation -- has become a very "dramatic movement" inside the company, he said.

"So, when I look into the future, I see more of that. I see a company of confident, not arrogant, but humble and confident, creatively confident innovators," Sikka said when asked about his vision of Infosys in 2020.

He added that he would like the teams to be "experts of automation and artificial intelligence" and "who have curiosity to learn about what is going on around them and have the ability to translate those ideas into action".

Infosys has set a goal of what it itself calls as "aspirational", aiming for USD 20 billion in revenue, 30 per cent margins and USD 80,000 revenue per employee by 2020. The target may seem uphill, given that the company crossed USD 10 billion revenue in 2016. With about three years to the target, Sikka is still confident and said: "What goal is an aspirational goal, which is not aspirational."