Infosys to set up five SEZs in the country

New Delhi, May 31: Increasing its headcount by 25,000 this fiscal, Infosys Technologies Ltd plans to set up five Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and will be scouting around for takeovers, senior company official said here today.

Infosys Technologies will set up SEZs in the IT space in Pune, Chandigarh, Mysore, Mangalore and Thiruvananthapuram, Chief Operating Officer (COO) Kris Gopalakrishnan told reporters here.

''We have presence in over nine cities of which five will have the SEZs. We also have plans to increase our headcount by 25,000,'' Mr Gopalakrishnan said.

The company is planning to invest 400 million dollars as CAPEX and will be pumping some money into these proposed SEZs.

On acquisitions, the COO said the company is looking for small acqusitions within the region of 50-100 million dollars, but said 'it is not hungry for them'.

Banking, health care, high-tech telecom and life sciences are some of the areas the company is looking for acquisitions, he added.

These acquisitions are just a part of their strategy and not meant for growth, the COO said.

Infosys is also keen in increasing its presence in Europe especially in countries like France, UK, Germany, Netherlands, Italy and Spain.

About 65 per cent and 25 per cent of its revenue comes from North America and Europe respectively. Finacle, the universal core banking solution from Infosys, provides three per cent of the company's total revenue.

The Software Engineering and Technology Labs (SETLabs), which spearheads the company's Intellectual Property (IP) development has also filed over 20 patents in 2005-06. It also has around 82 potential patents to its credit.

The company's investment in Research and Development (R and D) last year was about 1.2 per cent of the total revenues.

Infosys also has plans to expand its base in China and intends to increase its work force by 150 per cent.

The company already has a development center in Shanghai with over 500 employees and plans to increase the headcount by 1,000 by the end of this year and plans to increase it to 5,000 within the next two-three years.

The base in China will cater to the domestic market as well as the neighbouring countries like Korea which have a similar language.

UNI