• Over 40 telecom clients with 7 new accounts added

• Growth areas include VoIP, mobile TV, IPTV, wireless and cable TV

• Key orders on business transformation projects, product development and business design process

• Diversified from wireline to wireless and cable MSO

To what do you attribute the impressive 71% growth rate over previous year's revenue, in the telecom segment?
Beginning of last fiscal we had kept a modest target of 20-30% growth, and are very pleased to have exceeded it beyond expectations. I feel there are three main factors for this high growth: Most of our existing clients did exceedingly well last year, as a result we grew with them. Secondly, the Australian telecom business, which had earlier shown a dip, picked up considerably in the last fiscal-this accelerated our growth further as we have Australia's national carrier, Telstra, as one of our main clients. Last, but not the least, we have successfully diversified our focus into many areas beyond the wireline business, into wireless and Cable MSO.

Subhash B Dhar

vp, comm service providers

What are the new areas of business you are keenly looking at?
The job is to go deeper into the cable and wireless segments; we have only just skimmed the surface. We are keen to take up large transformation projects. We want to enable all three-wireline, wireless and cable companies, to leverage the concept of IP multimedia subsystem or a converged platform for voice, data and video. So we feel Mobile TV, IPTV, VoIP, are the holy grails and we need to be competent in to enable our clients to succeed.

Can you share with us details of some significant projects undertaken?|
We are engaged in some blue-blooded consulting engagements. For example, Infosys is advising a leading Cable MSO in North America in building a management business case for their investment in a new convergent platform. This is a high impact capital investment advisory service, which involves a technology direction. This is extremely challenging for us as we bring in not just our consulting capability but our understanding of the telecom domain and technology. We have also been asked by another leading cable company to partner in the product development process. This involves generation of services. We are very excited of such opportunities that go beyond technology and involve redesigning business processes.

What are the challenges you face looking forward?
There are two major challenges in my mind. One is to be trusted as a structure transformational partner. So far we have been considered to be very good implementers, but we would now like to be known as a complete end-to-end partner who can lead a client's entire transformational program; right from conceptualizing and executing the change.

The other challenge is how to improve the non-linear growth curve. Today, Infosys growth is by and large proportional to the number of people we have in the company. The challenge is to break that norm, and grow revenues without having to add new staff. We would like to charge our customer not on time or material, but on function points, results, and features or per problem solved. This will be a value-add for customers as well.

Now that you have set your bar so high, how do you plan to continue the momentum?
Looking ahead we feel that we have just scratched the surface really. We are eyeing opportunities beyond business as usual. This is key as the business landscape of our clients is changing, and Infosys is adept in acclimatizing to changing client needs. We are more focused on being nimble-footed. Europe is our geographical focus for the current year as we haven't penetrated the region. We have a huge potential to grow in English-speaking countries and that would keep us busy for the next 4-5 years.