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Infosys Bucks Global Trend, Asks Some Staff Back in Office 10 Days a Month

Infosys Bucks Global Trend, Asks Some Staff Back in Office 10 Days a Month

Indian tech giant Infosys Ltd. is making headlines by defying the global trend and asking some of its employees to return to the office for a minimum of 10 days a month. This decision comes in stark contrast to many of its global peers who are moving towards greater remote work flexibility.

A Departure from Pandemic-Era Remote Work

Infosys Bucks Global Trend, Asks Some Staff Back in Office 10 Days a Month

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This change follows a controversial statement by Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy, who suggested that young Indians should work 70 hours a week, a stance that is at odds with Infosys’s official position on providing complete flexibility to its employees.

Infosys is not the only Indian IT services provider to ask employees to return to the office. Its larger Indian rival, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., had already requested many of its employees to return to the office for five days a week, starting from October 1. This shift is driven by the desire to enhance efficiency as demand for their services faces challenges amidst a global technology spending slowdown.

On the global stage, major tech companies are also opting for office-centric approaches. Amazon.com Inc. in the United States has been taking measures to ensure that employees adhere to its mandate, requiring them to work in the office for three days a week. Alphabet Inc.’s Google faced backlash for its similar office return policy.

Infosys CEO's Perspective

Infosys’s Chief Executive Officer, Salil Parekh, emphasized during an earnings call that the company is witnessing an increase in employees returning to the office, despite maintaining a flexible work policy. He explained, “There are some instances, for example, with specific client work or specific types of engagement where we feel it’s better that everyone is working together. But in general, our view is we want to support this flexible approach. It’s something that we believe is appropriate given how we’ve set up the work-from-home infrastructure.”

As Infosys deviates from the prevailing global trend toward remote work, it remains to be seen how this move will impact its workforce and whether it will influence the wider Indian IT services industry’s approach to office work in the post-pandemic era.

Infosys and NVIDIA Collaboration

Infosys and NVIDIA Collaborate to Help World’s Enterprises Boost Productivity with Generative AI

On Wednesday, Infosys and NVIDIA declared that they have intensified their strategic partnership to support businesses all over the world in using generative AI tools and applications to increase productivity.

Infosys and NVIDIA Collaboration
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The expanded collaboration will provide Infosys Topaz, an AI-first suite of services, solutions, as well as platforms that enhance company value by leveraging generative artificial intelligence technologies, with access to the NVIDIA AI Enterprise network of models, runtimes, tools, plus GPU systems. Infosys will develop products that clients can use to quickly incorporate generative AI into their operations through the integration, the firm stated in its regulatory submission.

Furthermore, Infosys announced plans to establish an NVIDIA Excellence Centre, where it would educate and certify 50,000 of its staff members on NVIDIA artificial intelligence (AI) technology to offer generative artificial intelligence (AI) services to its extensive network of clients across sectors.

“Infosys is transforming into an AI-first company to better provide AI-based services to our clients worldwide. Our clients are also looking at complex AI use cases that can drive significant business value across their entire value chain,” said Nandan Nilekani, Co-founder and Chairman, Infosys.

“Infosys Topaz offerings and solutions are complementary to NVIDIA’s core stack. By combining our strengths and training 50,000 of our workforce on NVIDIA AI technology, we are creating end-to-end industry leading AI solutions that will help enterprises on their journey to become AI-first,” he added.

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Integrated Full-Stack NVIDIA Enables Sophisticated Infosys Services To foster creativity across all of its business processes, Infosys leverages the full-stack NVIDIA generative artificial intelligence platform, which includes enterprise-grade software as well as hardware. Infosys also assists clients in developing generative artificial intelligence applications for company operations, revenue, and advertising.

The NVIDIA AI Enterprise network is swiftly scaling up to deliver the generative AI platform. Together with Infosys, NVIDIA is going to create a skilled workforce to assist startups in using this platform to develop unique applications and services.

Also Read: OpenAI Releases Third Version of AI Image Creator DALL-E in October

Infosys is currently developing several AI-first business solutions across sectors using NVIDIA AI Enterprise systems, models with prior training, and toolkits, such as the NVIDIA NeMo LLM structure, NVIDIA Metropolis for computer vision, including NVIDIA Riva for speech Intelligence.

combining the Infosys Video Analytics solution with NVIDIA Metropolis, which uses the capabilities of computer vision to tackle a variety of difficulties facing the retail sector, which includes the creation of seamless purchasing experiences.

Infosys Story: From A Small Room Office To $11 Billion Multinational Company

After seeing the success of startups like Whatsapp, SlideShare, Uber, Snapdeal, the thirst of becoming entrepreneur among today’s youth is increasing at a rapid pace. However, after two or three failed attempts, most of them step back in despair. One thing everyone should keep in mind that nobody or no venture becomes successful without tasting failures. Setting a high aim is perfectly fine but one should also be prepared for the challenges that will come on the way. Worldwide acclaimed and India’s top software company, Infosys too has tasted failures before it became software giant. The huge empire we see today also started from a speck of dust. The only thing that made this company a huge success is firm determination of Narayana Murthy, one of the founders of the company.

The Foundation
The fire to get success in entrepreneurial world was ignited in Narayana Murthy in the early 70’s, when he founded his first venture, Softronics. But unfortunately, the company couldn’t stand the demands of the business world and Murthy had to shut it down. Murthy went back to job and joined Patni Computer Systems as General Manager. However, the urge to go back to entrepreneurship didn’t let him settle down in job. The wait for the right time was finally over when on one morning of January 1981, he sat with his six software engineer friends, N S Raghavan, S Gopalakrishnan, Nandan Nilekani, S D Shibulal, K Dinesh and Ashok Arora to talk about opening a company to develop software.

infosyslogoThe spark and passion to establish the company was then brimmed in all of them but the biggest hurdle was funds required for setting up a company. None of them had the required capital to invest in the business. This is when Sudha, Narayana Murthy’s wife helped them with $250 (Rs.10,000), her savings of three years, to lay the foundation of the company. The first milestone was crossed after 6 months and  they registered their company on 2nd July 1981 as Infosys Consultants Private Limited.

Burning mid night oil
Although they had registered N S Raghavan’s house in Dadar, Mumbai as the company’s office but there was no company office as such. But in 1982, when Murthy and his wife moved to Pune and bought a small house there, the front room of the house was then used as the office of the company.

In 1983 Infosys got its first client, Data Basics Corporation, a U.S based company. They had to move their company to Bangalore to make the dealings with their client easier. Murthy alone moved to Bangalore to manage the company. The environment around was not at all business friendly and this is why Murthy and the other company founders had to face difficulties at every step. Due to insufficiency of money, he could not make a separate office for the company and worked from home. As time passed, the whole team shifted to Bangalore and devoted themselves to the work. The financial status of the company didn’t allow them to recruit employees and thus all the founders along with Murthy’s wife toiled themselves day and night to write codes.

On the verge of breakdown
Around three years later, the company moved into a joint venture with Kurt Salmon Associates. But the venture couldn’t last long and collapsed in 1989. This dissolution of the joint venture gave them a big jolt. The little bit of hope left to take to company few steps ahead was also gone. Even after 8 years, they found themselves stagnated at the same place without any success while their class fellows were all leading a luxurious life. This failure got them into a situation of crisis as the company was about to collapse. Seeing the present condition, one of the founders, Ashok Arora decided to sell his shares and quit as he could not see any hope left in this company.

A new beginning
While other partners were left bewildered from this failure, Narayana Murthy stood firm in his determination and decided to continue trying. The others too got inspired from his optimism and soon they returned to work with the same passion and vigor as they started eight years ago. This time they made up some plans and strategies to move ahead. They divided the work among themselves where Murthy took the responsibility of a manager, Nilekani handled sales department, Krishnan and Shibulal overtook the technical end, Rhaghavan was given the responsibility to deal with people and Dinesh looked in the matters of quality.

With their dedicated efforts, talent and efficiency the company began gaining the momentum. The light of success was visible now as their hard work started paying off. The company began expanding with more employees and offices. In no time they established their first international office in Boston city of U.S.

Infosys established itself as an top software company in India by mid of 90’s. Narayana Murthy now looked forward to build up a good image of the company in the country as well as overseas. He began investing in building huge campuses to seep deeper into the global market. But the stupor of success could not infect him as he always followed the principles he made for his business. For him ethics in business were more important than gaining profit and this is the reason that took his company to become India’s second biggest software company.

By 1995, Infosys opened global development centers including an office in U.K. In the year 1999, the company with a worth of $100 million got listed in NASDAQ. Though there was some troubling time in 2012-13 which forced Narayan Murti to come back to Infosys. Now under Vishal Sikka’s leadership Infosys is again on growth path. Today, Infosys has offices in various countries and its present worth is around $11 billion.