Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka creates a special panel to look into all acquisitions

India’s second largest software exporter Infosys has formed a special investment committee on its board to keep a watch on all new acquisitions and big investments of the company. Vishal Sikka, the CEO of the Bengaluru-headquartered IT MNC, is aggressively pursuing buyouts as the company wants to generate $20 billion of revenue by 2020.

Its rivals, both Wipro and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), have a special committee to oversee decisions regarding strategy planning, capital expenditure programmes, acquisitions and investments.
Roopa Kudva, new board member and managing director of Omidyar Network's India operations, would chair the committee that comprises board veteran and former Microsoft India chairman Ravi Venkatesan among other board members, two people familiar with the development told the Economic Times.
"Infosys felt that creating a committee to oversee acquisitions was a necessity, given the company's more aggressive stance on acquisitions and investments under Sikka — this committee will be responsible for vetting and overseeing all decisions the company makes on acquisitions, along with the approval of the rest of the board," said one of them.
Infosys declined to confirm whether such a committee had been formed. "We do not comment on rumours or speculation," a company spokeswoman said in an email response to ET.

Sikka has said that he wants acquisitions to generate at least $1.5 billion of that.
According to the company's quarterly report, Infosys had cash and cash equivalents of about $5.2 billion as of March 31, 2015. Earlier, in an interview to ET, Sikka said that Infosys would be very aggressive in chasing buyouts. In February, days after the software company bought automation startup Panaya for about Rs 1,200 crore ($200 million), the first non-founder CEO of Infosys said, "We have a dozen targets we are looking at now."
Infosys made another large acquisition and bought ecommerce services provider Kallidus (also known as Skava) for $120 million in April. "Anytime we see a company with talent, capabilities and IP in these areas (AI and collaboration technology) we would love to go for an acquisition," said Sikka, a former SAP board member.
Both the Panaya and Skava acquisitions were vetted by the newly-formed investment committee on the Infosys board, said the two sources quoted above.
The formation of this committee comes at a crucial juncture for Infosys, which is making big bets in newer areas of technology as part of Sikka's overall plan to turnaround the fortunes of the company and also when rivals such as TCS and Wipro are trying to make similar investments to gain a first-mover advantage in areas such as artificial intelligence and automation.
Sandra Notardonato of Gartner Research said, to achieve the compound annual rate of revenue growth of 18% implied by the $20 billion target, Infosys is counting on $1.5 billion in acquisitions, 10% contribution from new service areas and 15% internal growth.
It’s worth noting that Infosys’ rival Wipro also has a committee that oversees decisions around acquisitions, among other things. Wipro's billionaire chairman Azim Premji, CEO TK Kurien, board veterans William Arthur Owens and Jagdish Sheth, and former head of Hewlett-Packard's printing business Vyomesh Joshi are currently part of this committee.
Even Tata Consultancy Services has an executive committee that oversees decisions around capital expenditure programmes, acquisitions and investments. Members of the committee include TCS CEO N Chandrasekaran, Tata Group chairman Cyrus Mistry, former company veteran S Ramadorai, Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen and board veteran Ron Sommer.

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