
Its rivals, both
Roopa Kudva, new board member and managing director of
"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
Infosys made another large acquisition and bought ecommerce services provider
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
It’s worth noting that Infosys’ rival Wipro also has a committee that oversees decisions around acquisitions, among other things. Wipro's billionaire chairman
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,
(Image: Indiatimes)