India’s Infosys raises revenue forecast, says ready for visa challenge

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BENGALURU/NEW DELHI: Indian software services firm Infosys Ltd raised its annual revenue growth forecast on Wednesday as it posted a better-than-expected quarterly profit, buoyed by growth in demand for its digital services during the pandemic.

The Bengaluru-headquartered company said it expected annual revenue in the financial year to end-March 2021 to grow between 2% and 3% in constant currency terms versus the previous year, from an earlier expectation of revenue being flat to up 2%.

“There is lot of focus on enabling a remote place of working, a lot of focus on accelerated digital transformation, a lot of focus on migrating workflows to the cloud,” said Pravin Rao, the chief operating officer at Infosys, which provides services such as cloud, data and analytics to global clients.

Infosys, which typically used H-1B visas to connect U.S. businesses with thousands of foreign engineers and programmers, has stepped up local hiring in the past three years and is ready to meet any challenges arising from changes to the U.S. visa regime, Rao said.

Rules notified by the U.S. earlier this month include limiting the validity of an H-1B visa to one year for workers placed at third-party worksites.

“We are very confident that we will be able to bring the right talent either locally or globally to our clients,” Rao told reporters in a virtual news conference.

Infosys’ consolidated net profit in the September quarter climbed 26.6% to 48.45 billion rupees ($661.35 million). Analysts on average had expected a profit of 45.19 billion rupees, according to Refinitiv data.

“Infosys results today … signify how important it has become for enterprises to invest in IT to weather any disruptive situation – be it a pandemic or an economic recession,” Forrester analyst Ashutosh Sharma said.