Today in Tech: If TCS can do better than expected, what ails Infosys; Yahoo! Password Leaks

NS Ramnath
Updated: Oct 1, 2012 01:28:56 AM UTC

If TCS can do better than expected, what ails Infosys? TCS officials insist that it was just a coincidence, that Thursday happened to be a convenient day for board members and it was not to prove a point that having beat Infosys on many fronts, they wanted to catch up on announcement dates too.

Still, the contrasting pictures the top two IT companies painted on Thursday gave headline writers a field day. IT’s Over for Infy: TCS is the New Bellwether (Economic Times). TCS Balm After Infy Pain (Business Standard). Market falls as Infosys disappoints; TCS sparkles (Business Line). Infosys Cuts Guidance; TCS beats Expectations (Mint).

The underlying – and a more significant - question is if TCS can do well in a given environment, is Infosys right in blaming its slow growth on external factors. Infosys has been negative about the industry growth for some time now. Yesterday, during the press conference, Infosys CFO V Balakrishnan called Nasscom’s projections ambitious. Infosys itself would grow by about 5% this financial year.

Yet, a few hours later, N Chandrasekaran, CEO of TCS exuded confidence. He said TCS would grow faster than the industry. Last month Nasscom said the sector will grow at 11-14% this year. It’s not as high as it used to be, but it’s not as low as 5%.

So, is Infosys being fair in blaming its own under-performance on external factors? The answer – from what I gathered during and after the press conference yesterday – is both yes and no. Infosys CEO Shibulal said there is no doubt that the industry is facing a tough time. But some companies get affected more – depending on the businesses they are in. Infosys happens to get a majority of its revenues from the sub-segments that are not doing well. But, when they pick up - as Infosys expects them to - the company will do better than the market. It sounded to me a bit like the set of volatile stocks that perform worse than the market when the market goes down, but better than the market when it goes up.

But, it’s also true that Infosys cannot blame it entirely on the environment. Part of it is also due to internal issues. Shibulal pinned them all down to a reorganisation exercise it completed a few quarters back. Once that is in place, it would be all set to ride the momentum and even get ahead.

The top managers say they are seeing signs that the re-org has started working. But, the market obviously hasn’t.

 

Check if your Yahoo! password has been leaked
Some days back it was Linkedin, and now it’s Yahoo. A group of hackers going by the name D33Ds Company breached into Yahoo network, and posted over 450,000 passwords online in a text format. Check if your account has been compromised here.

 

Also of interest:

  • Supermarkets Use Retina Trackers To Monitor Your Shopping Choices: Popular Science
  • MIT develops holographic, glasses-free 3D TV : Extreme Tech
  • Wikipedia Founder: Site Would Go Dark Again to Protect Online Freedom : WSJ
  • The Education of Groupon CEO Andrew Mason: Bloomberg Businessweek
  • Microsoft’s Bing Fund will give online startups cash, advice, and discounts: Venture Beat
  • Aereo planning rollout to 'most' major US markets by 2013: Verge
  • The Future Of Customer Experience – 3 Examples Of Virtual Assistants, Biometrics And Siri-Style Services: TechCrunch
  • Twitter's anatomy of a mobile redesign: Engadget

 

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.

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