The milestone was achieved in morning trade on Tuesday when Infosys shares touched a one-year high of Rs 1,755 on the BSE. This took the mcap to $100.7 billion. The stock closed 1% lower at Rs 1,720. Feather New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) too, the m-cap of Infosys was close to $100 billion in morning trade.
While it took 20 years for Infosys to reach $50 billion in m-cap, the next $50 billion took more than a year, an astonishing growth rate under its CEO Salil Parekh. IT companies are seeing a smart recovery from the pandemic due to their customers’ desire for digital transformation through the cloud and greater focus on data and analytics.
Mohandas Pai, former CFO of Infosys, said, “In 1994, the valuation of Infosys was $100 million. In 27 years, it’s crossed $100 billion, and it’s a good story. The rise of Infosys marks the rise of India after liberalization and the rise of the global IT services industry. It should have come earlier, except for the disruption in the firm.”
Marty G Subramaniam, Charles E. Merrill Professor of Finance, Economics and International Business at the Stern School of Business New York University, and who was on the board of Infosys from 1998 to 2011, recalls that when he joined the company, he had revenue of $47 million and 1,500 employees. “He raised the bar for corporate-governance ethics in India. The board was not just an adornment to look at. My views were respected and I had many acrimonious debates with the management. The secret sauce was good governance, values and ethics, hard work and NRN has a vision,” he said.
It has been a fictional journey for the Bengaluru company which was started by NR Narayana Murthy in 1981 along with six others. It was listed on the Indian stock exchange in 1993 and became the first Indian registered company to be listed on the American stock exchange. Nasdaq, in 1999. Infosys has long been considered the gold standard for corporate governance among Indian corporates. “When in doubt, always disclose,” was Murthy’s mantra. In a webinar last year, Murthy said, “The good thing about the founders of Infosys is that they were high in aspiration, they were self-confident, they were hardworking and had good values, but we had very little money. First 13 For years, none of us had a car, we all lived in a rented house… So, there was a slight dissatisfaction among some of the spouses.
Vallabh Bhansali, Co-Founder and Chairman of Enam Group and who helped launch Infosys IPO, said, “For me, the value of Infosys is not so much in its market cap as in the amount of Indian people it takes to build ventures. To awaken the aspirations. Earn everyone’s praise. How this can happen only with better governance, it has contributed immensely in the gradual transformation of the corporate world. $100 billion is only an intermediate milestone for a company that is still young and hungry,” he told TOI. When Enam completed the IPO of Infosys, the issue was “barely subscribed”.
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