Infosys ‘s corporate headquarters is located in Bangalore and is the second largest IT company in India. It was started in 1983 by seven entrepreneurs – N. R. Narayana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani, Kris Gopalakrishnan, S. D. Shibulal, K. Dinesh, Ashok Arora, and N. S. Raghavan, with only $250 USD. The first product produced was banking software for Data Basics Corporation in New York. Infosys went public in 1993, started the Infosys Foundation, dealing with healthcare and social issues, in 1996, and was listed on the NASDAQ in 1999. Throughout the ‘90’s many global Infosys offices were opened, including sites in California and Europe. In 2004, the business model was realigned and revenue reached $1 Billion. Shortly after, in 2005, the Infosys Global Education Center was opened on the Mysore campus. Infosys is now home to over 130,000 employees and makes around $6 Billion in revenue.
On Friday, we all travelled to Mysore to visit Infosys’s training campus. The training campus is the largest corporate training hub in the world and has 11,000 rooms on campus to accommodate the trainees. It has a capacity to hold 14,000 people, with the help of the second Global Education Center opened in 2009. In addition, 5,000 employees work on-site in production, actually dealing with clients. Undergraduate students from India, mostly in the engineering and computer science fields, are recruited to train at the training campus for 23 weeks, this ensures that they are software engineers by the end of their stay. They go through a rigorous training course M-F, beginning with general training and then going into specialized technical training. After completion of the 23 weeks, they are randomly placed around the company sites into specific projects like Java and dotnet, based on company requirements. If the student performs poorly in the training course, they have to leave the campus. The percentage of poor performers is now between 3-5%. American graduates are also accepted, but they are not trained as long.
Living as a trainee at the Infosys training campus is like staying at a hotel resort. It is a 350 acre campus with 400 facilities, of which seven spell out “Infosys” if looked at from an aerial view, 7 food courts, and the largest corporate library in the world. The campus also provides 2 gyms, an outdoor swimming pool, several outdoor sport facilities including soccer, field and track, cricket, tennis, and badminton. There is also an indoor bowling alley and a table tennis room. There is a 24-hour employee care center with counselors to help keep employees and trainees in the best mental and physical shape so that they can perform their work at optimal level. The campus also boasts a large 4-screen movie theater, where it screens new releases on the weekends for the students.
I was blown away by how spectacular this training campus was and made me want to be recruited to work for Infosys. They really seem to care about their employees and make sure that they receive the best training possible to be able to perform their job, this is apparent in the fact that it spends $12,000 to train each trainee.
Categories