The Biz of Coding

InStep - Infosys’s program for building a Vibrant Global Workforce

by Ujwal Tickoo on May 16th, 2006

This post continues from my previous post Infosys Technologies’s Global Plans.

Besides being declared The Best Managed Company in India in a study done by AT Kearny and Business Today; Infosys Technologies (INFY) was also ranked # 32 by BusinessWeek in its list of Top 100 most Innovative Companies. (Infosys was # 10 in Asia Pacific region.)

To sustain its innovative edge Infosys Technologies runs a Global Internship Program called InStep. According to Infosys:

InStep provides a platform for students from top academic institutions around the world, to work on live technical and business projects, ranging from application development to business consulting in Infosys’ offices worldwide.

According to a report in Red Herring that covered Infosys’s InStep:

Students from schools such as Stanford Graduate School of Business, MIT Sloan School of Management, Harvard Business School, and the Said Business School of Oxford have been competing to visit Infosys’ Bangalore campus for InStep, the Infosys internship program.

Last year InStep received over 11,000 applications for 100 positions. InStep recruits students from 82 universities in 18 countries to come to India for eight to 24 weeks to learn as an intern at Infosys.

TCS another Indian IT major has for long proclaimed the plan of being amongst the Top 10 IT Players in the world by 2010. TCS along with Wipro and Infosys are the top Indian IT employers and players.

With TCS openly focusing on being in the Top - 10 by 2010, similar ambitions of Infosys and Wipro (NYSE:WIT) cannot be ignored. To be amongst Top IT firms world-wide, world-leading manpower is a core challenge for these firms.

Infosys runs an employee training center in Mysore that has been called the "Taj Mahal of training centers" by Forbes. According to this Forbes report it is tougher to get a job in Infosys than admission to Harvard University.

Last year, over 1.3 million people applied for a job at Infosys. Only 1% of them were hired. In comparison, Harvard College took in 9% of candidates

Infosys’s Chairman & Chief Mentor, Narayan Murthy, is amongst the most recognized admired and genuinely respected Indian Business Leader’s globally and within India. InStep is very much a brain child of Narayan Murthy who deeply believes in having a vibrant and well trained workforce.

The market capitalization of Infosys Technologies is close to US $ 20 Billion and Infosys raked in close to US $ 1.6 Billion in annual revenues for 2005. Globaloutsourcing.org had ranked both Infosys and Wipro amongst the top 5 most valuable companies in 2005.

POSTED IN: India, Information Economy, Infosys