BENGALURU: Infosys on Saturday said that in fiscal 2017, automation has released the jobs of 11,000 full-time employees. In his address to shareholders at the 36th Annual General Meeting, Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka reiterated the company’s intentions to move towards automation.
For engineers looking for a job within the Indian IT sector, this comes as a strong blow at a time when the US has proposed a clampdown on the number of H1Bs, reducing offshore opportunities for Indians.
Recently, Infosys also announced that it would create 10,000 jobs in US catering to local talents, in a bid to reduce its dependency on visas.
Shareholders at the AGM flagged both automation and creation of new jobs in the US as an important concern. One of the shareholders who spoke at the meeting said while it was understood that the company needed to open up job opportunities in the US, this could turn out to be a problem for the company in the future. “Hiring people in the US while firing people in India is not a sustainable approach. The company should have more focused Indian units. The revenue from India should be increased. India should not be left out of the game,” the shareholder said.
During the last fiscal, Infosys has grown multiple new services in cloud applications, cyber security, data science, among others, These services represent a rapidly growing portion of the company’s incremental revenue each year, Sikka said.
Meanwhile, the revenue from software-related services including Infosys Nia, Edge, Panaya, and Skava grew by 42%in fiscal 2017 at a much higher Revenue per Employee than the rest of the company.