Excellence. Let's unfold this amazing story. In 1981, led by Narayan Amurthy, 7 young professionals started Infosys Consultants Private Limited in Pune, India. With just $2.50 0 infrastructure, their dream to create good quality software was born. Times were tough and the journey was challenging.
But with unwavering spirit, the team pursued their dream. The endurance paid off. Infosys got its first client, DataBasics Corporation in New York. The team worked 20 fourseven for DataBasics and its customers in the apparel sector. In 1983, Infosys shifted to Bangalore, a city that would emerge as India's IT hub.
A time sharing deal was struck with Meico for the use of Infosys' first mini computer, a data general 32 bit MV8000. The very next year, Infosys switched from mini to mainframes. As times changed, so did technologies. Infosys scaled the value chain, delighted customers and explored new domains. The company's first product, a banking application for the SIRSI Urban Cooperative Bank, made its debut in the Indian market.
Soon, Infosys delivered an automated solution for Canara Bank using client server technology. The Infosys banking solution model had begun to take shape. In 1987, Digital Equipment Corporation came on board. Infosys began focusing on direct marketing in the U. S, pioneering the global delivery model to redefine software services.
During the early days, software was sent abroad by courier and the source code was often faxed. Meanwhile in India, liberalization in the early 90s transformed the business climate. For Infosys, the time was ripe to move to Europe. The first European client was Lebim Technologies in Milan. Reebok France followed shortly.
Infosys developed and installed a DMAB application for Reebok, strengthening its foothold in Europe. In 1992, Infosys opened its 1st international sales office in Boston, which doubled up as the 1st network hub overseas and provided dedicated connectivity for clients. Back home, Infosys went public in 1993, embracing the finest principles of transparency and corporate governance. The pace was set. The industry boomed and Infosys grew twice as fast.
The corporate headquarters moved to electronic city in Bangalore. True to its values, Infosys shared wealth with its employees. The employee stock option plan was announced. Infosys was now a household name. In the mid-90s, Infosys began expanding its global footprint.
The first overseas development center was opened at Fremont in the U. S, the first European office followed in the U. K. In India, Bangalore became the 1st development center outside Bangalore. With an eye on ensuring predictable revenue growth, Infosys was well on its way to going global.
In 1996, the Infosys Foundation was an important year for Infosys. It marked the company's listing on the NASDAQ, a first for an India registered company. It crossed $100,000,000 in revenue and achieved the quality milestone of CMM level 5. By the new millennium, the single building headquarters had grown to a sprawling campus receiving high profile guests such as Bill Gates and Tony Blair. Infosys City was fast becoming the symbol of a new resurgent India.
On the product front, the 1st core banking solution from Infosys, BANKS 2000, was relaunched as the pinnacle suite of products. The Infosys Leadership Institute was established in MISO to mentor future leaders. By 2000 and 2, Infosys had 345 clients across domains and had achieved $500,000,000 in revenue. It entered the business process management space with Proteon, later renamed Infosys BPO. Another milestone was around the corner.
In 2003, Infosys took the Indian shareholder to the global market with a sponsored secondary ADS offering. 2004 was a sparkling year as well. With the realigned business model and an impressive client base, Infosys' revenue touched the magical figure of $1,000,000,000 Accolades multiplied with revenues. The time was right for a competitive consulting firm. Infosys Consulting was launched in the U.
S. Subsidiaries in China and Australia further strengthened the global footprint. In India, a state of the art global education center opened its doors at the MISO campus in 2,005. The same year, Infosys also priced the largest international equity offering from India at $1,000,000,000 By 2,006, the Infosys family grew to over 50,000 infocions across the world. Revenues leaped to $2,000,000,000 while the first $1,000,000,000 took 23 years, the second $1,000,000,000 took just 23 months.
It was a hint of the pace of things to come. Infosys celebrated 25 years by ringing the NASDAQ opening bell remotely from Mysore, the first Asian company to do so. In December 2006, Infosys became the 1st Indian company to be added to the NASDAQ 100 Index. Infosys' global footprint expanded further when its first Latin American subsidiary was opened in Mexico. The financial year 2,008 ended with over $1,000,000,000 in net profit and crossed the $4,000,000,000 revenue mark.
Shareholders were rewarded with the largest dividend payout in Indian corporate history. Version 10 of the Finnacle Universal Banking solution was financial results. And the global education center was inaugurated at Mysore with the capacity to groom over 14,000 A similar commitment to promoting excellence in scientific research led to the setting up of the Infosys Science Foundation and the institution of the Infosys Prize in 6 categories. The Infosys Science Foundation Lectures, a series of public talks by Infosys Prize tutors and winners, were introduced in 2011 to motivate young Indians to take up the pure sciences and arts. In 2014, the company set up a wholly owned subsidiary, Edgewerve Systems Limited, with a startup like operating environment aimed at developing differentiated intellectual assets, leveraging software products and platforms.
While Infosys has stayed focused on its technological innovation and business growth, as a responsible organization, it has made its place in the forefront of the worldwide sustainability movement. Within 5 years, through the adoption of energy efficient practices, the company has saved around 650,000,000 units of power, enough to light up thousands of urban homes. In 2012, Infosys ranked among the top 25 performers in the Caring for Climate initiative. Newsweek also ranked it 8th among the world's greenest companies. In the period between 2014 2017, Doctor.
Vishal Sikka served as the 1st non founder CEO and MD of Infosys. In August 2017, Nandan Nilekani, co founder and former CEO, was appointed Non Executive Chairman of the Board. January 2018 saw Salal Parikh take over the reins of the company as the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director. A validation of the Infosys culture of training and mentorship came in 2019 when INstep, the company's global internship program, was ranked number 1 in the world by vault.com. Infosys today is a truly global brand with a culturally diverse and technologically talented workforce of over 200,000 employees who are helping global enterprises navigate their digital journeys and transition seamlessly to their next.
From helping them execute change with AI powered core to bringing agility at a scale demanded by their customers to enriching their business through a global innovation ecosystem. Infosys is leading the way in guiding clients into an exciting digital future. But some things haven't changed. Our values continue to shape our journey. While we have the courage to dream, the will to work, the passion to excel and the grit to take the next giant leap.
Be original. Be daring. Be different. Be unreasonable, be anything that will assert the integrity of your purpose and imagination.
Think. Think of the 50,000,000,000 devices that will connect to the Internet by 2025 And the data, this is already storing in the cloud. That's 10 times the information contained in all human speech throughout history. Think of the jobs artificial intelligence will wipe away, then create, and the new skills we'll need to thrive. Our future is decidedly digital and disruptive.
We all need a little help navigating to this digital future, including enterprises like yours. At Infosys, we've built our entire strategy around doing just that.
So there are 4 pillars that are part of this strategic outlook. The first is building an agile digital future for our clients and for ourselves. The second pillar really is all about taking the core work we are doing for our clients, all of the technology that is foundational for them and energizing it, really automating it, putting AI, applying NEA and all AI technology into improving the productivity. The 3rd component is focused on our employees. We want to make sure that all of our employees are rescaled, are looking at what they should be doing for the future and building that that the clients are looking for and the market is looking for and that in many cases the employees are looking for.
And the 4th pillar of this strategy is we want to localize in the markets where we are large. For example, in the U. S, we want to build out DCs, we want to build out local recruitment in Europe, in Australia, so to augment what we're doing in India in those markets as well. If we put those four things together, agile digital, energize the core, reskill the employees and expand in local markets, We are now going to navigate your next for the client to really take our clients from where they are to the digital future that they are looking for.
Let me share with you examples of exactly how we are helping our clients do this. Our client, an airline manufacturer, wanted to ease the struggle their customers faced when trying to find the right documentation to maintain their aircrafts. We built a secure public cloud platform to host their product manuals for anytime, anywhere access. While this saved them over $1,000,000 in customer servicing costs, it also did something extraordinary for them. They invited other aircraft manufacturers to share this secure cloud to host their own documentation and then begin offering documentation hosting as a subscription based service.
It not only solved a big challenge that their customers were facing, but it also generated exciting new revenues for them in the very first year. For another client, we are working to make sense of their data around consumer actions, response to promotions, smart label scans, customer propensities along with price and promotion sensitivities. We then use machine learning models to improve the recommendation logic for their real time product promotions. In fact, we've helped entire industries benefit from being digital. A case in point is how we deploy AI to detect anomalies and data values and transaction volumes that point to suspicious events for banks.
We then study these patterns to predict incidents and enable just in time prevention of banking fraud. All this is made possible with our agile digital offerings along with our hyper automated core services and platforms. Infosys Nia brings in a big productivity advantage while also helping businesses find new ways to solve stubborn problems. And speaking of finding a way, that we believe is the job of every Infosion. After all, we are, each one of us, a navigator.
It takes continuous re skilling to make it work. We also have a collaboration ecosystem, which makes sure that some of the world's best learnings and inventions outside of our own are available to fast track your transformation. Even as we develop local and agile hubs for innovation embedded within vibrant ecosystems that also include you. And we go beyond business because we care for things that are probably equally important to you. So think business and beyond.
Think about the future, a digital future full of exciting opportunities that people across 1100 and more enterprises in 45 countries are exploring with us. Now think of the many exciting next that await your people and your business. Navigate your next with Infosys.
At Infosys, we have always aimed to be the world's most respected company. This one line is a bold statement. It carries weight, might, efforts and desires of 250,000 empositions. Respect is truly earned when it's in an alliance with a larger society, and it rests on 3 key pillars: environmental, social and corporate governance, more commonly known as ESG. Environmental issues like climate change and resource scarcity form important elements of ESG, but the term means much more.
It covers social issues like labor practices, talent management, ethics. At Infosys, we started our ESG journey long before it became a mandate. On the environment front, we crafted bold and ambitious goals to save the planet in 2,007. We committed to becoming carbon neutral in 2020 and won the prestigious United Nations Global Climate Action Awards in the Climate Neutral Now category. More than 102,000 families continue to benefit from our carbon offset programs.
Focus on water includes reducing the consumption of fresh water as well as preserving every drop. 35 lakes and ponds across campuses in India with a holding capacity of 330,000,000 liters for rainwater harvesting are complemented with 370 injection wells. 91% of single use plastic has been eliminated from our India campuses. Infosys Foundation was established to support the less privileged sections of society, create opportunities and strive towards a more equitable society. From free dharamshalas for caregivers of terminally ill patients to promoting reforms in governance through our sanitation project, setting up 10,000 toilets in North Karnataka, to rehabilitating Devadasis, a community that all of society gave up on.
The list is endless. The Aarohan Social Innovation Awards provided INR 4.27 crore funding to winners in 2020. Our Campus Connect is the largest academia industry partnership in India. IN STEP, our flagship global internship program has been ranked the world's best internship for 2 consecutive years. The Infosys prize is given to honor outstanding achievements of contemporary researchers and scientists.
You need strong governance to be ranked 3 amongst the world's best regarded companies. This recognition is a testimony to our long lasting values and continuous pursuit of excellence towards making our clients successful. Today, at Infosys, we have 144 nationalities represented in our global workforce. We have been recognized as the top employer of 2020 across Europe, Middle East, Australia, Singapore and Japan.
Let's take a moment and speak about gender diversity. It has been a long road, but I believe we're getting there. So let's talk about our milestones. Today, we have 38% female population in the company with 25% women on the board. And the data point which fills me with tears is that we have 89% of women returning to our post maternity leave.
Gender is not the only area of diversity we're focused on. About 92% of our new hires are local hires, which has contributed to the increased representation of multiple nationalities in our organization. We do show our support for the LGBTQI community as a signatory to the United Nations Code of Conduct. Infosys has become the only Australian technology company to be certified as a disability confident recruiter by the Australian Network of Disability. This partnership has given us the opportunity to support, mentor and recruit people with disabilities such as people on the autism spectrum.
What all these points drive home is that it takes collective conscience to inspire an organization of our scale to consistently remain at the forefront of society good. We thank each one of you for playing your part and contributing to this important journey.
Infosys has an amazing culture that fits very well to the German demands. How Germans are not just perfect to the point, but Germans are perfect 3 digits behind the comma. And Infosys brings exactly that quality and that spirit. So it's a very good match.
We've created a digital brain, which pulls together a killer combination of emerging but open source technologies that allows the organization to respond real time just like a human.
Should look like. You have enough space to have room for ideas, and I think this is what the key is because you are not producing any hardware as such. You're producing something which is based on a process of thought. And this is something which is very unique, and I think that you need to have creative space for that and I think that the Infosys office on the 2 Fours here right at the Kirstlatt in the middle of Dusseldorf is a great place for that. Is one of the most well received employers around the world, so this is exactly the kind of employer where we would like to see our students blossom.
Gets here this local culture into the office and takes also up the spirit of startups, which is here in Dusseldorf. So I hope that we will see this culture and an emphasis in the next couple of months here in this office.
It is very important that there is a viability for the center in terms of the financial models of the organization. I think when you assess multiple cities within Germany, Dusseldorf ranked number 1 among all these parameters. So Dusseldorf, and here we are.
How can an enterprise learn from nature? How can it sense, respond, and act like a living organism? How can an enterprise become a live enterprise? These are the core questions we are creating solutions for, for ourselves and for our and for our clients. At Infosys, we are transforming into a digital native organization, using the Infosys Live Enterprise Suite, an enterprise that is hyper productive.
Observable.
Responsive.
Sentient.
And continuously learning. We are driving intuitive decisions, building responsive value chains, delivering perceptive
I welcome the members to the 39th Annual General Meeting. This meeting is being held through video conference in accordance with the circular issue by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and SEBI. For safety reasons, each of us is in a different location. Before we start the main proceedings of the meeting, I request my colleagues on the video conference to introduce themselves. Salif?
Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Salif Parekh. I'm the CEO and Managing Director of Infosys. I'm in Bengaluru in my home.
Namaskara.
I am Praveen Rao, Chief Operating Officer and member of the Board. I am attending from my residence in Bengaluru. Kiran? Namaskara.
I'm Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Lead Independent Director. I'm attending this interim from my residence in Bengaluru.
Sundaram?
This is Sundaram, attending the AGM of Infosys from Mumbai. I'm an independent Director and Chair of the Audit Committee. Thank you.
Hello. Good evening. I'm Puneetah Kumar Sinha, Independent Director and Chair of the Stakeholders Relationship Committee attending the AGM from Jharkhand.
Good afternoon, everyone. This is Michael Gibbs. I'm attending from my home in Houston, Texas. Good
afternoon, everyone. My name is Uri Levin, and I'm attending from Tel Aviv, Israel.
Nilanjan?
Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Nilanjan Roy, CFO, attending from the Bengaluru campus.
Marik? Hi. Good evening, everyone. This is Manikanta, company secretary, joining from Bangalore.
Apart from them, we also have key executives and senior management joining from their respective locations. Strategy Auditor Deloitte and Secret Auditor Parmeshwadi Hegde have also joined this meeting. We have the requisite quorum present through video conference to conduct the proceedings of this meeting. Participation of members through video conference is being reckoned for the purpose of quorum as per the circulars issued by MCA and Section 103 of the company's Act 2013. The quorum being present, I call this meeting to order.
I now request Manikanta, company secretary, to provide general instructions to the members regarding participation in this meeting.
Hi. Good evening, everyone. Members may note that this Annual General Meeting is being held through video conference in accordance with the Companies Act 2013 and circular issued with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and CB. Facility for joining this meeting through video conference or other audiovisual means is made available for the members on a first come, 1st serve basis. The company has also provided webcast facility to view the live proceedings of this Annual General Meeting on the company's website.
The register of directors and key managerial personnel, the register of contracts or arrangements has been made available electronically for inspection by the members during the AGM. Members seeking to inspect such documents can send their request to investors at infosys.com. As the AGM is being held through video conference, the facility for appointment of proxies by the members was not applicable and hence the proxy register for inspection is not available. The company has received requests from VUE members to register them as speakers at the meeting. Accordingly, the floor will be open for these members to ask questions or express their views.
The moderator will facilitate this session once the Chairman opens the floor for questions and answers. Members can also post their views or questions on the Ask a Question tab on their video conference screens before 4:30 p. M. IST. It may be noted that the company reserves the right to limit the number of members asking questions depending on the availability of the time at the AGM.
The company had provided the facility to cast the votes electronically on all resolutions set forth in the notice. Members who have not cast their votes electronically and who are participating in this meeting will have an opportunity to cast their votes during the meeting through the e voting system provided by NSDL. Members can click on Vote tab on the video conference screen to avail this feature. Members are requested to refer to the instructions provided in the notice are appearing on the video conference page for a seamless participation through video conference. In case members face any difficulty, they may reach out on the helpline numbers.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mani. The company has taken all feasible efforts under the current circumstances to enable members to participate through video conference and vote at the AGM. I thank all the members, colleagues on the board, auditors and the management team for joining this meeting over a video conference. I hope all of you are safe and are in good health. Dear shareholders, welcome to the 39 Annual General Meeting of Infosys.
It is a pleasure to connect with all of you again, although this time we meet virtually. On behalf of the Infosys Board of Directors, I want to thank you for taking the time out to join us today. Your support and confidence in us even in uncertain times like these drive us to look for more ways to do more and create greater value. During fiscal 2020, our overall revenue grew 9.8% in constant currency terms, totaling US12.8 billion dollars With operational rigor and steady focus on expense management, our margin stood at 21.3%. The value of our large transformation deal stood at US9 $1,000,000 and our digital revenue in constant currency terms grew by 38%.
The Board Directors has recommended a final dividend of INR 9.5 per share for fiscal 2020. Coupled with an interim dividend of INR 8 per share paid in October 2019, the total dividend payout for the year was INR8120 crores. Our earnings per share grew by 8.3% in U. S. Dollar terms.
The Board of Directors has recommended the appointment of Uri Levin as an independent director of the company effective April 20, 2020. Uri is a much admired serial tech entrepreneur with extensive and in-depth business understanding of emerging technologies and will bring tremendous value to the company. DN Prahlad has stepped down as an independent director to devote more time to his other business commitments. Earlier, in February 2020, Roopa Kutba retired from the Board of Infosys as an Independent Director after the completion of her tenure. On behalf of the Board of Directors and on your behalf, I place on record our appreciation for the services rendered by them during their tenure.
The COVID-nineteen pandemic is extraordinary and unprecedented. It has impacted the world and every country, business and individual. These are not easy times for any of us and all our clients are dealing with several challenges as well. For instance, retailers have been hit hard in the non grocery, apparel, lifestyle and fashion sections. Travel and hospitality have greatly slumped.
Bankers will have to deal with deferred loan payments. The insurance sector is compelled to charge lower premiums in some categories and manufacturers must manage both demand and supply hurdles as they repair their broken supply chains. Media and entertainment is impacted because of reduced outdoor activities and shrinking ad spend. 5 gs projects and adoption will slow down as well as corporates begin to reconsider their capital allocation. From building more flexible supply chains to urgently enhancing e commerce offerings and supporting new models of employee experience, so much needs to be done to accelerate recovery and resilience.
Technology is essential to get it all working, the efficiency of automation to make it viable and experiential design to unlock more value from this with all of that. We can help them become more responsive to the changing context and develop live enterprise capabilities. We have already pivoted our resources to the new needs of our clients and strengthened our expertise in cloud, first aid transformation and smart automation to be able to help them accelerate and scale their digital endeavors. Much of the confidence that we can deliver comes from our own digital transformation in the past 2 years, guided by the Navigate Your Next strategy articulated by Salil Parekh, our CEO and MD. This has amplified our capabilities with virtual workplaces, secure polyglot environment, microservice services for our digital platforms, curated offerings in our service store and tools for remote collaboration.
All these are our strengths as a live enterprise. With the strategic steer from our CEO, Praveen Rao and the global senior leadership, the same strength helped us prioritize the safety
of our
workforce through the pandemic, enabling 93% of our over 240,000 employees across 46 countries to work from home in just a few weeks. Our remote access infrastructure was expanded 10x for virtual private network bandwidth and back end capacity scaled by 4x to support the increase in concurrent connected remote users. Officially provided devices as well as personal ones were enabled with wireless connectivity to let our employees securely connect with our office networks. Cloud based remote audio, video and content collaboration platforms are integral to this setup. The Infimi application continues to connect all Infosys employees to the latest company updates from advisories to policies and other company benefits, while also allowing them to self declare the health status.
In Mysore, over 9,000 trainees and interns have relocated to their homes from a residential global education center. They're all enabled to continue training on our digital learning platform, Infosys Lex. In addition to bite sized online content, Lex brings trainer led lessons, a hands on lab environment and even proctored internal certifications, all virtually to the homes of our learners. Our clients continue to take advantage, albeit remotely, of our digital delivery centers in the Europe, Asia and in U. S.
To meet the growing demand for direct in market engagements, in early FY 2020, we added a new center each in Arizona in the U. S. And in Dusseldorf, Germany. Encouraged by the strong traction we are seeing for a global network of digital studios, we added to the chain an experience design and innovation studio in London. This year, we surpassed our spring 2017 commitment to hire 10,000 American workers.
We also hired over 19,000 college graduates from campuses in India. The post cloud era is bringing our industry the opportunity to do so much more. Infosys this year was recognized as Microsoft Global Alliance SI Partner of the Year, largely because of the significant influence we have over Microsoft Azure consumption with our clients. We also continue to grow solutions on Amazon Web Services to help our clients fast track their digital transformation on cloud. We expanded our relationship with Google Cloud to become the managed qualified managed services provider and grow in our ability to provide industry specific solutions on Google Cloud Platform.
In addition, Infosys has become the 1st global integrator to join IBM's new public cloud ecosystem. This collaboration will help our clients, including those in highly regulated industries such as financial services, insurance and healthcare to benefit from public cloud. Our acquisition of Simplus, one of the fastest growing sales force platinum partner in the U. S. And Australia, further accelerates our enterprise cloud capabilities.
Over the last few years, we have made huge investments in making Infosys stronger and more resilient. These investments have positioned us very well and this is demonstrated in the way we are responding to COVID-nineteen pandemic. Combining the scale, brand and relationships of a large company with the speed, responsiveness and agility of a start up, we are confident of guiding through this global crisis. Our robust balance sheet, steady growth momentum, digital systems for our people and our executive team unified in their focus on strategy execution are the advantages that are clearly working for us. On behalf of the Board, I want to assure you all that we will spare no effort to build on this foundation to emerge stronger in time.
We remain indebted to the generous guidance and support of our partners, clients, co founders and governments of the several countries and states that we operate in. And I'm grateful to you, our shareholder, for your continued trust in us. Thank you. Warm regards, Nandan. I now request Salil, CEO and MD, to address the shareholders.
Thank you, Nandan, and good afternoon again to all the shareholders that are joining in. I will take a few minutes to share with you our journey in financial year 2020 and then give you a little flavor of how things have developed in just the last few weeks as well and a glimpse of where we are going in the future. The way I'm trying to define this for the session, first, it's about our successful financial year 2020. 2nd is about the stability that we have seen in the time of crisis. And the third, to show and demonstrate our live enterprise concept very much in action.
In terms of how financial 2020 was and the way that we made a difference with our clients, first, we had excellent growth. The growth was 9.8% for the full year. We had a strong operating margin. Even better, our earnings per share grew very strongly at 8.3% in dollar terms. Our digital revenue growth was excellent far in advance of where the market is.
And more critically, advantage of our overall company, the digital business is now well over 40% and becoming bigger and bigger. We had put a lot of efforts into large deals and those came in at over RMB9 1,000,000,000 just at RMB9 1,000,000,000 for the year. Our company today is GBP 12,800,000,000 in size, 240,000 employees across 46 countries. One of the things we had started a few years ago was our digital journey. In this digital journey with this pentagon, which is something we use inside the company extensively with our clients every day and also with everyone outside in terms of analysts to know how we think about digital.
Both the digital revenue growth has been accelerating, if you look at the difference between financial year 'nineteen and financial year 'twenty. And the percentage of digital in our company is going up. We know this is a business that our clients are really close to, and the more we pursue this, the more we will be relevant for their future. In support of these and as a result of these, we have seen our overall growth accelerate across the last 2 years from where we were and we plan to maintain this to come out of the crisis as well. What is even heartening is the way we are focused on our large client accounts and relationships.
Here, we track relationships which yield more than $100,000,000 per year, relationships which yield more than $50,000,000 per year. And you can see a clear and steady progress that your company has made in building, maintaining and expanding these relationships. We've all talked about how the large deals have progressed and this is also heartening to see that what we had as a very strong foundation, we then built upon it in the previous year in financial year 'nineteen and further scaled it in financial year 'nineteen to have a solid engine for large deals momentum. In summary, our financial performance is strong. Here, I want to share some of our numbers in rupees to show all of the movement in income, in profit and EPS in rupee terms as well.
As we have done all of this, we have got tremendous recognition from the outside world beyond the numbers and beyond the financial metrics. We have been ranked number 3 by Forbes as the world's best regarded company. This is truly something everyone within Infosys has a huge amount of pride, and everyone outside, including all of our shareholders, should feel tremendous joy to see me having received this. We won a UN award on Global Climate Action, again, something that was started 10 or 15 years ago by the founders as a really leading mission is something we are proud that the company continues to do and build upon. And we've also received awards from our partners like Microsoft, from independent analysts like Gartner and IDC.
And in many different fields. I've given just a few examples here, but these are in a number of different fields that we are starting to perform and have been performing in a leading
way.
Then I want to share some to give you a clear view that we are in excellent financial strength as we closed the year. We add $3,600,000,000 of cash on our balance sheet with 0 debt. We provided $1,100,000,000 of dividends financial year. And a critical measure, 97.8 percent of our revenue comes from non rupee currencies, mainly U. S.
Dollar, euro, Australian dollar and the U. K. Pound. To give you a little bit more detail on the balance sheet, you can see that it's strong, it's debt free and it's liquid, something which is very important when one enters a crisis of the nature we are in the middle of. Here, I want to share a little bit about how we have returned capital to our shareholders.
In fact, we expanded our capital return policy through the financial year and made it spread out over 5 years to make sure we take all the right measures of returning capital across a 5 year period. We remain committed to this, and this is something that we are quite proud of in returning the capital to our shareholders. As a consequence, we have built an extremely strong foundation for our future success. So in addition to having a good year in financial year 2020, we are preparing a foundation for the future years so that we've been as strong in the market as we've been. We have the trust of our clients, relevant services, especially on the digital side.
We have an extremely motivated team of employees. And we have an aligned leadership team that is working hand in hand and working together for the better of the company. Now as March came upon us, at the end of March, the crisis started, and we have maintained an absolutely laser focus during this crisis so far. We very quickly moved our attention to some new and very limited few priorities. The first amongst them was employee safety.
The second, we wanted to have absolute stability in delivering our work for our clients. 3rd, we could sense that the clients were looking at new things and we wanted to shift to those needs. And of course, 4th, we wanted to be even more careful with our cost and expense. As we entered the crisis, even if we had a strong balance sheet, we did not want to take any chances. 1st, on employee safety, that is the most critical element for us.
Our entire team led by Praveen and everyone in the leadership put this absolutely into motion right away. We have social distancing, masks, sanitation, temperature checks and a variety of measures, which we have implemented within our campus to make sure everything for our employees is safe. We already have 99% of our employees working effectively with technology enablement, thanks to the foresight that the company had some years ago and the achievements that were made in the infrastructure and then the rapid way we could, in a modular manner, expand that infrastructure. On this slide, I give just some examples without reading all of them of the detailed positive comments that I, our own team, all of our leaders have received from hundreds of clients of the company. It is actually quite touching to see how the clients acted in the way that the company has supported the clients and therefore feeling of depending strongly on the company.
Then we noticed that clients are looking for new things in this environment. Another things that Nandan mentioned was the quick agility, quick reflex, even if it's a big company. We have now looked at what is the client's need on cloud and digital. To give you one example, in a discussion I was having over such a link with the CEO of a company 2 weeks ago. They made a statement that it's taking 24 months to do in the digital transformation program.
They want to finish in the matter of 2 months. This is the speed that our clients are now
looking for.
We are ready to help them. The second, as we are being careful with our cost and expenses, all clients are similarly careful with our cost and expenses. With that, we have seen an increased use of automation that we have put in place. 3rd, because of the strength of what we have done recently and the long history of trust that our clients have with us, in addition to the financial strength of the company, many clients are looking at consolidations, and we feel we will be well positioned to take advantage of that. In this crisis, we are also operating with tremendous we are able to continue our work on service delivery, on transitions, on even sales activities with our clients in a new contactless method.
We've adopted huge amounts of reskilling across the company in the platform that Nandan was sharing with you and in many ways making it very important for the individuals to reskill. We've also developed an agile methodology, which we've launched and expanded across the company. Those things are making us more ready for the future. And then we launched a localization component of our strategy, which allows us, in addition to the depth we have in India, to build a more resilient business in different geographies and help us navigate better in the new and changing visa regulations. While we are doing all of this in terms of business, we continue to remain committed to the communities that we operate in and that we are involved in.
The Infosys Foundation in India is actually a leading example of the sorts of work that is being done, whether it's in the whether it's in food, whether it's in rural development, the list is extensive and very detailed and exhaustive in the way the support is provided. We've also started on a small way in the U. S. With our foundation activities, and we did some small activities in the U. K.
As well in this financial year, given what was going on in the country. Again, as a consequence of all of these actions and the strength of the company, our expectation and my expectation is we will emerge stronger from this crisis. We will turn this crisis on a good momentum. And we believe keeping all the attention we have, we will emerge with a good momentum. 2nd, we have changed the direction to make sure we are focused on employee safety on clients' needs and the client service delivery.
We have with our actions increased the trust that our clients have with us. The commitment and motivation of employees remains strong and our leadership is quite focused and aligned. And so in conclusion, we had a successful year in 2020. We have stability during the 1st few months of the crisis. We are convinced that we will emerge stronger from this crisis.
I really want to thank you all for your continued support, dear shareholders, as the guidance and the support and the voice to make sure that the company continues on its journey into the future. Thank you, and back to you, Dandan.
Thank you, Salil. I now request Manikanta, our company secretary, to provide a summary of the auditors' report.
Thank you. The statutory auditors, Deloitte Haskins and Sells LLP and Secretarial Auditor, Paramesh Rajeev Hegle, has expressed unqualified opinion in the respective audit reports for the financial year 2019 2020. There were no qualifications, observations or adverse comments on financial statements and matters which have any material bearing on the functioning of the company. The statutory auditors report on stand alone financial statements and consolidated financial statements are available on Page Numbers 150212 of the annual report. Secretarial audit report is enclosed by Annexure 5 to the Board's report on Page number 45 of the annual report.
Thank you.
Thank you, Manikantha. As the notice is already circulated to all the members, I take the notice convening the meeting as read. Before we proceed, I am pleased to bring to your notice that as required under the Company's Act 20 13, the Company has provided you all the facility to cast your vote electronically on all resolutions set forth in the notice. Members who have not cast their vote electronically and who are participating in this meeting will have an opportunity to cast their votes through the e voting system provided by NSDL. Members may please note that there will be no voting by show of hands.
We now take up the resolutions as set forth in the notice. We will open the floor for any question by members after all the resolutions are tabled. Item number 1, adoption of financial statements. The financial statement of the company, including the consolidated financial statements for the financial year ended March 31, 2020, including the report of Board of Directors and auditors have always been provided to the members. Item number 2 of the notice, declaration of dividend.
The Board has recommended a final dividend of INR9.5 per equity share. You would recall that an interim dividend of INR 8 per equity share was already paid for the financial year ended March 31, 2020. The dividend amount including the interim will be INR 17.50 per equity share. Item number 3 of the notice. To appoint a Director in place of Salil Parekh, who retired by rotation and being eligible seeks reappointment.
Item number 4 of the notice, appointment of Puri Levin as an independent director. The text of the resolutions along with accelerated statement is provided in the notice circulated to the members. If any member desires to ask any question pertaining to any item on the notice, he, she may do so now. Members are requested to keep their questions brief and specific. The moderator will facilitate the questions on the video feature.
To avoid repetition, the answers to all the questions will be provided towards the end. Members may also note that the company reserves the right to limit the numbers of members asking questions depending on the availability of time. While the members are queuing up to ask questions, may I request the team to play short videos on building a live enterprise and making of the Aravan Social Innovation Awards.
How can an enterprise learn from nature? How can it sense, respond, and act like a living organism? How can an enterprise become a live enterprise? These are the core questions we are creating solutions for, for ourselves and for our clients. At Infosys, we are transforming into a digital native organization, using the Infosys Live Enterprise Suite, an enterprise that is hyper productive.
Observable,
And continuously learning. We are driving intuitive decisions, building responsive value chains, delivering perceptive Now imagine what the Infosys Live Enterprise Suite can do for you.
From 900 plus eager applicants to 10 passionate finalists, Selected through an intense judging process to win one award. That recognizes innovation aimed at social upliftment to bring smiles on the face of 1,000,000 and build a better India.
Our own means to go up. So from whatever problems we have, we'll solve that and go up in life in Rohan. I felt that it is a time for Infosys Foundation to institute an award, particularly the social innovation, which can affect our people of our country in particular because it makes a great difference in their life.
I think there's a strong need for encouraging people to think about unmet social need, as I said. And awards of this kind will focus attention on people who have either been passionate about such problems or have not had resource to pursue these ideas to logical conclusion?
Oh, I think it's a fantastic question. There is nothing in the government sector to match this. And which instills faith that there is someone looking at good work and rewarding it. I think it would be a motivator. We have looked at in presentations related to health.
That's I think that is where I would say the impact is more. The second area that we have looked at is environment.
The candidates who have made it to the final are from some very
We have a problem in trying to select the awardees because there are so many good innovations that we've seen.
We had participation from over 900 innovators representing 25 states in the country. Most of these innovations are powered by not just a relentless passion, but enormous personal sacrifice. All we possibly need is an institutional support system to scale these. The selection process has been very rigorous but at the same time very pointed in the sense that if I had a choice I would have totally picked up this thing. So I give credit to the team for having done a good job of scrutinizing applications and bringing such people together who have potential to grow and meet a lot of needs of our society.
India needs many, many things. But I think what innovation does is, and particularly social innovation, is most of the technologies that are developed are for profit companies. Social innovation is innovating for making products and services available for people who may not be able to pay.
Well, from a business perspective, there is a huge market which is lying on top. So it makes sense to actually work in these areas. So of course, it benefits the society. It helps the local economy.
I want to tell everyone, yes, you have a great idea. But you convert that into more usable idea. And then it should not be so expensive that people cannot afford it.
So I wish the best of luck to the winners. And I do hope that they take whatever ideas they have, they take it into products which are useful for the society.
So I would wish that those whom we succeed, those who succeed and those whom we earn in this award must not just feel satisfied with having done a great job of what they are doing, but must continue to innovate, must continue to experiment to find new challenges.
They are young, smart people and they have a passion to do something good. And I hope that they succeed not only for themselves but for the sake of our society and our country.
Dear shareholders, thank you for joining our 39th AGM today and for taking time to participate in today's AGM before we go live with the Q and A. Here are some points to note for your convenience. Please mention your name, folio number and the location from where you are joining. Each shareholder will have 2 minutes for their questions. To avoid repetition, the Board will respond to all the questions at the end.
Once you have asked your question, you can log off and continue to watch the AGM proceedings. The Board will be taking questions on video from shareholders in 2 or 3 sets depending on the number of questions on video.
My number is 1170201. I'm coming from Bangalore. Sir, first of all, I have sent an appeal to you for postponement of meeting with COVID period, but there is no response for that one. And why the company is hurriedly convening this meeting, I do not know what is the reason when this Ministry Corporate Affairs have is so liberal in giving the extension of periods for conducting the meeting. Secondly, sir, it's a question to the Chairman.
Sir, that is in Page number 13, you have said 9,000 trainees from Mysore Unit have been sent home. But what about Hyderabad units, sir? Neither you have shown us nor we have seen that one. That is one pending is there, of course. But what about that particular Hyderabad unit?
So secondly, there is a question to the, that is Salil Parikh. Sir, in your statement, you have given that it's with all cooperation of these officials and the employees, sir, that you have achieved an extraordinary result. What is an extraordinary result that is oddly that is the total profit that are that is implications. And this explanation I gave it to you in the financial statement. Sir, while appreciating this year, the company's help to the public, introduced this COVID period, I felt sorry one thing that particularly amid when the people are losing job, livelihood and their partial salary, they you came without many they are looking after that one.
But amid that one, the company has declared a perquisite package to Infosys employees in this period, particularly cold period that somewhere I heard that, somewhere I have seen that Mr. Parikh has been given a 43 crores package that I do not know whether it is true or not. But the public will think otherwise when this is the position, if you broadcast it through paper, it will be a burdensome to the other peoples also. And as well as the public think otherwise and distorts the image of the company. But anyway, now in this aspect, our Chairman is poor that is poor and our COO is rich.
For that, I will give a special wishes to him. Sir, coming to this financial aspect. This sir, you have I'm not talking about your dividend or bonus shares or rates issues or there is momentous, etcetera, etcetera. But I want to maintain, I want to look after the safety and this one concerned about the strength and stability of the company. Sir, in your financial statement, that is the Page number 22 to 24, you have given you have shown that a profit of 16,669 as a PAT, that is the profit of tax.
So
We request you to kindly wrap up your question at the earliest.
Only another three questions are small questions, please. When compared to that one, there is a growth of INR1230 crores that are compared to the earlier. Out of that, that is INR 760 crores. That is interest you earned on refund orders as well as this Panama adjustment, other things is there. INR160 crores goes out of INR1230 crores, only hardly INR 470 crores left over in growth.
So how do you justify that one? It is a great achievement. And what is your comments were my comments? So lastly, still some of that your subsidiaries are running land and loss. Last time, how it is already sounded in the last AGM.
But what is your strategy that is even Shandai also that is enemy country, Shandai also it is spending. What is your strategy to bring you to the positive line, sir? Sir, I am very much particular about the last item of your P and L that is other expense, sir. Nowhere I have seen here, but because some companies are loading some unallocated expenditures also It's not available to see that one. You please, Mr.
Shikanta will send afterwards the copy of that one that I will use it for my ensuing AGM, sir. So lastly, sir, that is this is the AGM. Some of our members are making use of this one, sir, making use of this one. I think there is no answer for that one. Anyway, I told you that one.
And then for that one, it is important.
Did we request you to kindly back up your question?
And lastly, it is a COVID period, Kopajaste. So that is more angry will be there. I will conclude this one. This is my comments. And thank you very much.
Good luck. Good evening. See you at our This is Christ College during next year physically. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you very much.
Thank you for your question, sir. We have noted your questions and the Board will answer at the end of the session. Thank you. Now we have a question coming in from the next shareholder, Mr. Anish Hegde.
Please go ahead with your question.
Hi. I'm Anish joining from Bangalore. My DB ID is 1281600162236. So I have two questions. So since most of the employees are now working from home and Infosys being the lead has enabled 90% of its workforce to more than 90% of its workforce to work from home.
And also WHO also recently released reports saying more than, there is a more than 5 fold increase in the number of cyber threat. So in this regard, the company has issued directives and the company has issued guidance to employees working from home as to how to protect their security. Seeing as how this brings about more security risk and more cost, what is the additional framework that the company has set up in this place to ensure that the data is secure, seeing as how the WHO report says there's an increase in the cyber threats. What is the additional people that the company has set up in place to protect its data? Secondly, since the company has also mentioned in this AGM in its annual report that an integrated framework has been set in place, which has strengthened the company's risk policy and Infosys also being a certified ISO 20 7012,013 ISM standard.
What is the risk that the company has anticipated or is anticipating from this cyber threat? Because in the annual report, the company has stated in the outlooks that there might be an increase in the cyber threat. So in this regard, what is the anticipated threat or what is the cost of this anticipated threat
on the company? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Anish Jagde. We have the next question coming from we have the next shareholder lined up. We request Manoj, kindly go ahead with your question.
Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity. My name is Manoj from Bangalore. My DPID is IN303028. My question is regarding the workplaces.
Much has been said about work from home, work from anywhere and all that. Given that Infosys has always prided itself on having a world class campus experience for its diverse workforce and for its clients, would there be any change in this strategy in light of the times we are in? Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Manoj. We have the next question from another shareholder. Mr. Vigyan, kindly unmute yourself and ask your question.
Mr. Vigyan, if you can go ahead and ask your question, please. Mr. Wigyan, we can't hear you. So again, we have trouble in hearing you.
I think there is some connectivity issue. Can you re log in and ask your question? We'll be taking the questions from other shareholders. You can kindly re log in and come in the queue. We have next question coming from Mr.
Naveen. Naveen, kindly unmute yourself and ask your question. Naveen, we can't hear you. Kindly unmute your mic and ask your question.
Thank you very much for the opportunity. Yes, hi. Thank you very much for the opportunity. Sir, I have few set of questions. First is, I mean, recently we have a news of H-1B and H-2B and other visas which are banned by United States.
What would be the impact on company imposys? Will there be any change in the business models because of due to this ban visa ban? Second question, there is a prevailing tensions between U. S. And China.
And right now, I mean, will there be will Infosys be benefited from this tensions? Will we get more business Infosys get more business because of these tensions? 3rd, I mean, right now, there is, of course, there is tensions between India and China as well now presently. So what would be the impact for Infosys? 3rd question is, as we said earlier, in the month on 22 May 2019, you have acquired the company by name Wongburi Holding Company.
Are you planning for future acquisitions and are the operations smooth for this particular company? Because this company is in U. S. Are the operations smooth enough for this particular company right now? Because this company is right now in U.
S. And just last question which I have to ask is one means, I mean, as we had heard a news about the Neiman Marcus, one of the company named Neiman Marcus of U. S, which had closed 40 stores, okay, which had closed 40 retail stores. Will there be an impact on Infosys? And same for JCPenney also.
So we have we were, you know, they were our clients. So that's what I wanted to know. My ID is, I'm sorry, I have not 20, 8,1600, 119,15,976. I'm calling from Mumbai. Just these four questions.
Thank you very much, sir.
Thank you, Sonali. We have the next shareholder coming in. Mr. Anjai, kindly unmute yourself and ask your question. Mr.
Anjay, can you hear us? I think we had some trouble with Anjay's collection. Can we have the next shareholder, please? Mr. Sudeep?
Mr. Sudeep, kindly yes, please kindly go ahead with your question.
Yes. Good day, everybody. Congrats on efforts in these trying times. Thank you for taking my query. My I have 2 sets of query.
1 is on growth and business continuity. Part of that is Infosys growth rate has come down significantly over the years compared to before. Shouldn't there be some out of the box thinking or steps to ensure much better growth rates than these last years? Next part is, what is the expected revenue impact growth in dollar in FY 2021? How does the new H1B visa rule affect Infosys performance from year on?
When can the company go back to EBITDA margins in excess of 26 percent? Then the next set of questions is on products and platforms. Shouldn't the company increase focus on products, platforms and productized domain expertise, making this a percentage of total revenue target and a 5 year plan? This percentage can be measured year on year visavishe total revenue for the whole company and can be verified with stated goals. Next part is, can we also produce software consumer products like Microsoft, etcetera, and also be a B2C company?
Next one is, how much is being spent each year as a percentage of sales on innovative technologies, products and platforms? Thank you for taking my queries.
Thank you, Mr. Sudip. May I request the next shareholder go ahead with the question, please? Mr. Arakaraj, kindly unmute yourself and go ahead with your question.
Yes. Thank you for the opportunity that we have given only to speak over here. What are the plans that Infosys is having in the 2021 to improve the overall profit percentage. That is interesting. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Rokhiraj. May I request the next shareholder to go ahead with the question, please? Madam, kindly go ahead with your question, Ms. Suchitra.
Ms. Suchitra, can you hear us? Ms. Suchitra, can you hear us? I think we have some trouble from the line of Ms.
Suchitra. Can we take the next question, please?
What is the impact on company's business in India as well as U. S. Due to COVID-nineteen pandemic situation? Secondly, what are your future plans to work on this pandemic COVID-nineteen situation? I hereby support all your resolutions.
Thanking you.
Thank you, Mr. Tudo. Can we have the next question, please? I think that was the last question from this set of shareholders. We'll come back with more set of questions shortly.
We have next set of questions from the next batch of shareholders. We have one question from an audio line from Mrs. Patel from Mumbai. Madam, can you hear us? Kindly go ahead with your question.
Good evening to all of you.
Good evening, madam. We can hear you. Can you go ahead with your question?
Yes, sir.
In your Alawit.
This is first time that we are it is not for the first time that in Infosys that we are talking from Bombay because every year except the last year, we have been talking with you all from Bombay on and off at the AGM. And it has been very excellent for giving me this opportunity to speak over here. I wish the company and everybody all the very best. I even wish Manikanta and even our Rekha, please give special regards to us. Now I put forth my questions.
Sir, economic downtrend is the best time for new acquisitions. Where does Infosys stand as far as new acquisitions are concerned during this pandemic lockdown? Can high cash be utilized for buying shares of other companies as an investment, not as an acquisition.
Can we unmute
you? Hello? Hello?
We can hear you. Kindly go ahead with your questions.
Yes. Again, high cash balance we utilize for buying shares of other companies as an investment but not as an acquisition? At least 5% to 10% from the 5% to 10% of the cash balance, which can be utilized by the company. Next question. How many off role employees are there in as far as your company is concerned, Infosys?
What is the impact of employee productivity in this pre COVID vis a vis post COVID period, lockdown period in the top line and bottom line impact, how much lease rental expense as a percentage to the income and profit of the company? What is the estimated reduction in cost of Ries rental due to work from home policy? Any new business verticals vertical and or opportunities which Infosys proposes to venture. I wish the company very best, the management team all the very best. Thank you for dividend, 8.5, though I feel it is a little less.
And of course, ups and downs are always there. I wish yes, I also wish Mr. Yuri Levin, Mr. Yuri Levin, if he is here at this meeting. Welcome, Mr.
Levin. I suppose that you have come in place of Mr. Prahlad. Mr. Levin, you have said PX, fair
flight, move it.
By any chance, are you going to implement this even in our country? It would have been it would be a great if possible. I support all your resolutions. I thank everybody for their excellent help and support. And wish good luck to all.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mikhail.
Thank you.
Can we have the next question from Mr. Anjay Ramesh? Anjay Ramesh, kindly unmute yourself and ask your question. Mr. Anjay Ramesh, kindly unmute yourself and ask your question.
Good day. Good day. Hope I am audible to all.
Yes, you are audible. Kindly go ahead with your question.
Thank you. First of all, thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak at this AGM, the 39th AGM of Infosys and the 1st e AGM of Infosys due to this corona era. So straight to the questions. Due to the positive of time, I'm not taking much time. Actually, I don't have any questions as such, but I have a few suggestions which the management and the Board could look upon.
First thing, during this COVID era, please make sure your stakeholders all the stakeholders are well-being No layoffs and so that reputation of the company will be at will be at the best second thing I would like to tell that you can work on the existing workforce and implement more talents I mean, more skills in them. That is the 2nd session. 3rd, I would like to say that you could see more on the CSR side, which would help the country and as a world as a whole since Ingoos is a global company, I would request you to have more emphasis on the CSR side because as in the balance sheet, as on the side of economics or the financials of the company is very strong, I hope that COVID cannot impact much on this. So best wishes to all the management and the Board of Directors. Thank you for this opportunity for me to me given to me.
Thank you.
Can we have next question from Mr. Vijayan, please? Mr. Anjai, if you can log off and continue the broadcast, please. If you see shareholders joining from audio, we request the shareholders to kindly go ahead and ask their questions.
Can we have the 1st shareholder on the audio question, please?
Mr.
Mukund Deshpande, kindly go ahead and ask your question. Do we have any other shareholder on the audio question? We have the next shareholder lined up for the video question. May I request to turn on the video? And then we can take the question by Ms.
Suchitra. Ms. Suchitra, kindly unmute yourself and ask your question. Ms. Suchitra?
Ms. Suchitra, are you asking your question on the audio? Ms. Suchitra, you need to unlock your unmute yourself and ask your question. I think there is some issue.
Ms. Suchitra, can you hear us? We have some connectivity issue from Ms. Suchitra's line. Can we take the next question from the next shareholder?
Mr. Abirup Nandi? Mr. Vighyan? Mr.
Vighyan, have you joined the audio line, please?
Right, sir. May I continue?
Mr. Vighyan, kindly go ahead. We can hear you very well. Kindly go ahead with your question.
Do you hear me, sir?
Yes, sir. We can hear you very well.
I'm audible.
Yes, sir. Please go ahead with your question.
Mr. Chairman, sir, member of the Board, my investor friend and ladies and gentlemen, I am CA BS Rimal. I am extremely grateful to Mr. Nilankani for giving us the opportunity to interact in the proceeding of this AGM and share our views and suggestion. I'm sure Mr.
Chairman would take it in proper perspective and would respond fully so that we go back fully informed. I'm also thankful to my fellow investors who have taken their time out to actively participate and share their views and suggestions to make it more lively. Sir, I happen to talk to your company secretary, Mr. Mani, yesterday, and he made a remark while talking that the COVID-nineteen has thrown up this opportunity to organize AGM on virtual mode. I cannot but more disagree with him that it was definitely open up the opportunity to participate at the AGM by the investor who reside outside the Peruvial Pre Company's registered office.
While in this subject, sir, could you tell us what is the expenses of conducting the meeting on virtual mode vis a vis physical mode? Let me now share a few of my thoughts and suggestions. I would like to offer my thanks to the Chairman and CEO, Mr. Parekh, for producing a reasonably good result under the prevailing circumstances. When we find there is a downward trend in the economy and also for rewarding the investor in various counts.
Going forward, I would like to put up take up the dividend payout, which is dear to for all the investor. The company has declared dividend to the tune of 17.50%, 53.2% compared to 21.50 percent, 68.8 percent last fiscal. Could you hope could we hope, sir, for better dividend payout in the current year? I would also like to point out the draconian provision of the Company's Act 13, wherein if dividend remains unclaimed, the shares would also be liable to be forfeited. Hence, the management as well as the investor should be very, very proactive in this regard, so that the shareholders don't miss to claim their unclaimed dividend.
In view of the present visa policy of Trump administration, what could be the impact on our company? In Page 26, revenue per employee is lower compared to previous year. Steps initiated by the company for rectification. Producer enlightened us about the present position of 2 subsidiaries shown under held for sale and for which INR 265 plus INR469 crores was provided in last year's account, their current position. While in this subject, my attention is also drawn to Page 34, where I found about 19 subsidiaries shows Neel Turnover and about 9 subsidiaries are running at a loss, totaling INR 4.20 crores approximately, out of the total 73 subsidiary company we have.
What is the management view and action and we said in this regard, sir?
Mr. Vijay, can you kindly wrap up your question at Zalios, please?
Yes, yes. In profit and loss account, and INR 14 crores is for the finance charges. What is that about and its next year's estimate? There appears to be a definite trend of this combination in India, SEM is also pursued by the government and digitization in India. And same is also pursued vigorously by the government and augmented by the present pandemic how the company could get benefit out of this trend.
In this respect, my attention goes to Page 24 wherein I found that currently as digital segment has grown by 2% and per segment fall 8%. What is your current projection in this regard? Sir, with this, I would like to conclude and thank you very much for giving me the patient hearing. Thank you so very much.
Thank you, Mr. Big Yam. Thank you. Do we have the next audio question, please? Mr.
Abiruk Nandi, can you hear us? Mr. Abiruk Nandi, kindly unmute yourself and ask your question. Mr. Abhirup Nandi?
We have the next question from Mr. Tamil Kumar Majumdar. He is on video. Mr. Tamal Kumar Majumdar, kindly go ahead and ask your question.
Hi, this is Tamal Kumar Majumdar, an equity shareholder from Calcutta. I have some questions about audited accounts and other matters. Firstly, my first question, our operating margin is decreasing year every year. From 25% in financial year 2016, it became 21.3% during financial year 2020.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Kindly go ahead and ask your question. We heard the first part of your question.
Would you please share your thoughts in this respect and your expectation for the current year? My second question is, it was Infosys recently announces permanent work for home for 30 T
30 T 30 T 30 T 30 T 30 T 30 T 30 T 30 T 30 T 30 T 30 T 30 T 30 T 30 T
30 T 30 T 30
T 30 T 30 T 30 T 30 T 30 T
Kindly go ahead, sir. Kindly go ahead and ask.
Is it okay audible?
Yes, we can hear you.
From A1A3 negative. Agency says that IMOZE rating can be further downgraded if it undertakes material gain at contact institutions
Thank you, Mr. Kamal Kumar Mazindar for your questions. Kindly log off and continue to watch the proceedings. May I request the next shareholder to go ahead and ask your question? Yes, kindly unmute yourself and go ahead, Mr.
Jaydeep. Jaydeep, kindly go ahead and ask your question.
Good
evening, Chairman, Board of Directors. Thanks for the dividend passed on to the shareholders. And sir, company managing continuity of business by the work from home in this era of crisis. Will this continue this system in the normal conditions? Sir, the recent crisis has accelerated clients more along digital activities like planned scheduling cost reduction and reducing idle time.
Hope our company will seize this opportunity to serve the changing needs and we are planning to and are we planning to spread globally outside 46 countries? Sir, due to COVID crisis, are there any plans for layoff or planning for 3 days of work schedule like that? So that's all from my side, and best wishes to the management and staff for the coming days with better results. And what future plans you have? Any future plans like that?
Thank you, sir. [SPEAKER UNIDENTIFIED COMPANY REPRESENTATIVE:]
Thank you, Mr. Jayjay. Mr. Adil, Mrs. Humayun?
Mrs. Humayun, we can't hear you. Can you kindly speak or unmute
your line? You mean?
Yes, kindly go ahead and ask your question. Yes, madam. Kindly ask you a question.
Can you all hear me? Hello? Yes. Hello?
Yes, we can hear you. Kindly ask your question.
I'd like to know this lockdown, how has it affected us? I just want to know it what extent it has affected us? One question. Secondly, I want to know our subsidiary in China, Will this war between India and China affect our work in China? I would just like to know.
Are you planning to close down because in the beginning or is it running in profit? I would like to know. And regarding recruitment, have you done any new recruitment? Was there a need to do new recruitment? Or what are you about to do when you have on hold because of this lockdown?
And we are proud of Mr. Nandan Nilekani. We are proud of all our directors. Mr. Nandan Nilekani was the pioneer of the founder of Aadhaar Tatch System.
In fact, we are proud of all our directors. They are all great authorities in their own respect. So if we came to know how many countries you are located, we just wanted to know. And regarding H1 visa, somebody else has also mentioned. So how will it affect us?
Will there be changes? So Mr. Trump claims he is a friend of Mr. Modi. So then Mr.
Modi's citizens should not be treated like this. We should be helped because without H1 visa, sir, our very good intelligent people will not be available to the Americans. Sir, I am now concluding my questions. Sir, I am handing it over to my husband because we are speaking on the same mobile. His name is Behrouz Purdade.
So he may speak for a few minutes with your permission.
Kindly hand over. Hello. Yes, yes, yes. Thank you very much.
Sir, I would like to ask you that in how many countries are we located, 46 countries or more than that? And how many employees we are having totally? Because TCS is having more than 4 lakh employees and whether Narayan Motti is taking keen interest in our company because he was the original founder with the support of Shudha Motti, the foundation, Infosys Foundation is doing very fantastic work. Sir, we would like to know how this pandemic situation has affected these profits? And sir, we would like to ask you which sector is doing the maximum profit in banking, finance, insurance.
So we would like to know. Sir, also we support all your resolutions and we would like to we have already visited your Bangalore unit and your Mysore unit also we have visited. Long back. Long back. And we are very old shareholders.
We used to attend your this AGM when Niladri Prasad used to conduct at ITC Maratha and subsequently Four Seasons. So we are very proud that we are able to get in connect with you and have our, what you call, maximum in touch with you. We would like to support all your resolutions and we wish our company all the best and you keep on giving maximum dividend because our company that on Friday, it has gone from SEK700,000,000 to SEK747,000,000 So
it has
share price has rocketed because of the essential. So all the IT companies are doing very well. And we hope that number 2 slot in the IT together will reward us all the shareholders. Sir, we wish our company all the best and we hope to see better days ahead. Thank you very much and give our regards to Narayan Murthy and Salil Parekh.
Sir, we hope to see you next year physically. Thank you very much. Sir?
[SPEAKER UNIDENTIFIED COMPANY
REPRESENTATIVE:] Thank you, sir. May I request the next question to be taken via video, Mr. Adil, kindly unmute yourself and ask your questions. Mr. Rajil, kindly unmute yes.
I think there is a poor connection from Mr. Adil. Mr. Adil, we'll take your question next probably you can come reconnecting and we will take the question. Meanwhile, may I request Mr.
Santosh to unmute himself and go ahead with his question?
Sir, my name is Santosh Kwan Rav. Are you hearing me, sir?
Yes, sir. We can hear you. Mainly go ahead with your question.
Sir, my name is Sankos Tomfraff from Calcutta. I do like to thank the congratulation and Board of Member and Chief CFO for their achievement through the year in spite of business difficulties due to pandemic. 2nd, I would like to thank Mr. Ramchandra and Mr. Roshree, Mrs.
Roshree for their effect in our nice dry run and personally support us with all technical issuance carry. Sir, 3rd, I would like to thank for good dividend by company at the rate of 7.50 for the share this year. With regard our respected Prime Minister vision for making India a self reliant nation, is there any extra incentive that Infosys is taking in its capacity as Infosys being one of the reputed indigenous organization? Thank you for allowing me to speak today and wishing everyone to share hope meet you all in person next year. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Santosh. Can we have the next question on an audio? Ms. Suchitra?
Thank you, Ms. Uchitra. And we have the next question on the audio, please. Mr. Abhirub?
Good afternoon. Am I audible?
Yes, sir. Kindly go ahead and ask your question.
Sorry, there was some video error from my side, so I apologize for this. Okay. My questions would be, sir, you have 2 subsidiaries, Infosys Technologies, Shanghai Company Limited, that is in China. It is our 100% subsidiary. It has been posting continuous loss.
And also you have Infosys Consulting, Shanghai Company Limited, that is a less material subsidiary, but that also has been has a negative equity. So what are the reasons for such continuous loss and what are the strategies ahead with these China companies? So you have invested INR1335 crores in Infosys Nova Holdings instead of directly investing in out of box systems incorporation. So what is the logic behind Directly is not indirectly investing through Infosys Nova Holdings. So proud to have our company getting certified by ISO 27,701.
So really great achievement. I would also like to really appreciate the way you have expressed open heartedly the risk related to current COVID situation, and we shareholder are absolutely agreeing with and we are prepared for it, hoping that management will give their best. Sir, thank you. There is no complaints regarding your financials. It has been very well disclosed.
And so as per audit committee, you are having exactly 3 members. So since it is a very important committee of our entity, do we need to incur are you looking ahead to increase 1 more member? Because 3 is the minimum, you are keeping the minimum. But still, if required, you may consider keeping 1 more member for audit committee. Thank you, sir.
Thank you, Mr. Abirup. Can we have the next question on audio, please? Mr. Santosh Kumar?
Ms. Kirtisha? Yes. Kirtisha, kindly go ahead and ask your question. We can hear you.
Can we move to the next question, please? Mr. Sharath Kumar. Okay. I think we have few shareholders lined up on the video.
Can we take the question from Thank you, Mr. Radil. Can we have the next question from an audio link, please? Mr. Sharath Kumar?
Mr. Sharath Kumar, kindly unmute yourself and ask your question. Mr. Muralidharan?
Yes, yes. Hello?
Yes, we can hear you.
Are you hearing me?
We can yes, kindly go ahead with your question.
Why our fees Why our net profit margin
Sir, we can hear you.
What are you doing for the shareholder betterment of the shareholder? What you plan for the betterment of shareholder now? I already got the second one.
Thank you, Mr. Priti Shah for your questions. Can we move to the next question in audio bridge? Mr. Redhapa, can you unmute yourself and ask your question, please?
Mr. Riddhapa, kindly ask your question. Can we move to the next question, please? Can we have Mr. Sharath Kumar?
Mr. Sharath Kumar, kindly ask your question. Mr. Abhishek?
Yes,
sir. Mr. Abhishek, we can hear you. Kindly go ahead and ask your question. Mr.
Abhishek, you can kindly go and ask your question. Looks like there is some connectivity issue with you. We request you to kindly go ahead and ask your question on audio. Yes, kindly go ahead and ask your question. I think Mr.
Abhishek is in a bad network area. We request him to kindly rejoin and ask the question. Meanwhile, can we ask the next shareholder to go ahead and ask the question? Mr. Ashok Chakravarthy, kindly go ahead and unmute yourself and ask your question.
Mr. Ashok Chakraborty? Can we take the next question from a video question, Mr. Murali Duran? Mr.
Muralidharan, kindly unmute yourself and ask your question. Mr. Muralidharan, we can't hear you.
1st of all, I would like to thank the Board for giving me an opportunity to attend to this. The point on this is now whether we will be able to get of this issue.
Thank you, Mr. Muralidharan. Can we have the next question from an audio line, please? Ashok Chakravarthy, Mr. Balakaraj, Mr.
Reddapa.
Good evening, sir.
Yes, Mr. Reddapa. Kindly go ahead and ask your question.
Sir, good evening, everybody, sir. My name is Reddapa Gunduru. So thank you for the necessity. You are giving very good opportunity for the virtual program today, sir. So I'm very much very happy about this meeting, sir.
Why? Because I wanted to appreciate our company Board of Directors, especially Nandan Nilegari Garo. Because he is a troubleshooter. He is increasing our company reputation higher level, sir. He is a nice person.
He is a capable person. He is a deserved person, sir. That's why we are investing more money every year, sir. Thank you so much for the dividend also, sir. Sir, my question is, what is the impact on recently, U.
S. Government and other countries are taking some decisions on ACE-one, all other visas. What is the impact on the company upcoming years for the revenue growth? So can you brief about this in this pandemic corona, what is the couple of years upcoming what is the impact on the company? Is it positive or negative?
I would like to know, sir. This is a one off company. Another question is okay, I'm listening only one question, sir.
Thank you, Mr. Redapa. Can we have the next question from Mr. Ashok Chakraborty? Mr.
Ashok Chakravarthy, kindly unmute yourself and ask your question. Can we move to the next shareholder, please, Mr. Mukund Deshpande.
Yes. Very good evening, all of you.
Sir, can you hear me?
Yes, sir. We can hear you. Kindly go ahead and ask a question.
Yes. Sir, my question is, the present COVID-nineteen crisis is going on. I will say it is a crisis 1. And second crisis will tomorrow may face where to problem with China border and other countries. So our management is ready to face the challenges.
Kindly unmute yourself and ask and continue asking your question, please.
My question is, present COVID-nineteen problem is going on. So I will say this is a crisis 1. And second crisis is tomorrow, May, we have to face, that is China border and other countries. So management is ready to face such challenges.
Thank you, Mr. Mukherjee. We have noted your questions. Can we have the next question from Mr. Abhishek, please?
Mr. Abhishek, kindly unmute yourself and ask your question. Mr. Abhishek, kindly go ahead and ask your question. Abhishek, kindly unmute yourself and ask your question.
Can we take the next question please from an audio bridge? Mr. Bharathraj, kindly unmute yourself and ask your question.
Mani, let's line up all the remaining and
check
Thank you. With this, we conclude the question session from all the shareholders. Now I hand over back to Mr. Nandan Nilekani.
Thank you for all the questions. While we provide the answers to the questions shortly, I request to play a video which showcases the work done by Infosys team during the last year. Hello. We will now begin the answers to the questions. In this round, we are answering the questions that were raised in the web chat.
And after 1 round of web chat questions, we will come back with a round of questions from the video and audio questions that I was asked just now. The first question I have is, any clarification on the whistleblower done during the last financial year apart from the stock exchange notification? This is from Preet Subodh by Jahnawala. Answer is, we have dealt with the matter in accordance with our whistleblower policy. The company cooperated with the investigation by the SEC in regard to the whistleblower matter.
In March 2020, the company received notification from SEC that the SEC had concluded investigation and the company does not anticipate any further action by the SEC on this matter. Additionally, the class action lawsuit that was filed in 2019 has been voluntarily dismissed without prejudice. With respect to Indian regulators, company has responded to all the inquiries received from all the authorities so far. We can confidently say that the matter is closed and that the whistleblower allegations have been dismissed. Second question.
Hi. I would like to know Infosys' strategy on acquisitions amidst various opportunities that are opening up due to COVID. This is Kalyan Kumar Gugilam. Answer is, we look at mainly tuck in acquisition opportunities in the digital technology arena, including bolstering our presence in some less represented geographies. We look forward to expand our presence and capabilities in technology of the future.
We are also seeing opportunities of the captive takeover area. Question number 3, from long term prospects, have you or assigned any team or have any plans to identify opportunities arising due to COVID situation? Shareholder name is Palmeswaran Venkatesalam. It is clear that enterprises that had moved forward with their digital transformation agenda leveraging technology have fared better in this crisis. Technology will be a major aspect of this solution for clients to shift their business models and increase their resilience, both of which are required right now.
We are quickly pivoted to offering resilient work remote working solutions like cybersecurity, return to workplace and IT cost restructuring as they have become very relevant to our clients. We're also seeing the acceleration of digital transformation in migration to cloud, automation and ensuring focus on optimizing costs. We're also seeing opportunities from vendor consolidation and captive takeout. Question number 4. This is from Mahesh Bhagwan Makija.
I would like to know how our company can help our nation and entire universe to combat COVID-nineteen through various types of technology. We are conscious of our social responsibility and have contributed to the efforts of governments and communities in the countries where we operate to combat the impact of this pandemic. Our technology research teams are deeply involved in assisting governments in various countries to respond to the pandemic using technology. In India, we're involved in assisting various local administrations dealing with contact tracing. Similarly, in the UK and the USA, we're helping to build technology, apps and solutions for contact tracing and aiding the healthcare communities.
As you know, our Infosys Foundation is doing a lot of work in creating healthcare facilities, ensuring needs of migrant workers are taken care of and in supporting PPE for healthcare workers. We're also working with government in Karnataka for setting up call center to track, help and monitor impacted citizens. So as you can see, we're doing a lot of things in the COVID areas. A final question is my question is about innovation in Infosys. Is Infosys working with any academic or research partners to create low cost medical equipment like ventilators for COVID?
This is from Sharma Kapaguntu. As I said in the previous answer, our technology teams are working across the world providing technology for contact tracing and other solutions and helping in aiding the healthcare communities around the world, nothing to do specifically with ventilators. So with that, I hand over to Salil to take his questions.
Thank you, Nandan. The shareholders, there's a few questions that have come to address. First question, have you seen any drop or cancellation of large projects from travel and hospitality sector? The shareholder asking K Mohit Dinh Gani. The answer is, for us, travel and hospitality sector is relatively small, so we don't expect any material business impact from this sector.
2nd question, please brief us about the least affected sector and worst affected sector with COVID and its impact when they compensate each other. I'll share my name, Anita Gandhi. Answer, sectors like retail manufacturing and the travel hospitality I just shared are the ones most impacted. Financial services, energy utilities are relatively lesser impacted. Communications, high-tech, life science, health care have seen actually slightly better opportunities.
There will be some overall negative impact as a result of COVID related decisions in the near term. But in the medium and long term, we see opportunities for clients as they fast track their digital transformation journey, consolidation of vendors and some captive activity. Next question, what is the outlook for the Q1 considering the COVID situation and U. S. H1B visa restrictions.
A question from shareholder, Bhupender Nath Modi. Here, we have seen the answer. We have seen the business impact due to deal closures and longer decision cycles. However, the impact is less as compared to what we envisaged in April. Since many of the economies have opened up, there is strong government fiscal monetary support.
We've not seen large cancellations. We've also been able to put in place methods through technology for connecting with our clients that have helped. We've also increased employees in the U. S. Over the last 2 or more years, where we have a large percentage of our employees over 60% who are independent of any visa situations.
The next question, what is the biggest business challenge faced by the company in view of COVID? And how do you plan to overcome this? The shareholder is Vinay Charanbir Shetty. The challenge facing us really all of our industry is really the uncertainty of the situation and the duration with respect to our clients. There is no clear sense yet of when the recovery is in and when the sentiment of our clients or their employees or in general the consumers will improve.
Another risk could be a second wave which could emerge and if there are more lockdowns. We are in constant communication
with
our clients, and overall, we see an increased move to the work of digital and we're assisting them more and more in this need. We are confident if we continue to work with immediate and emerging technology needs, we will actually emerge stronger prices. Next question, have you lost any market share in the U. S? Shareholder name, Jasmeet Singh.
We continue to engage with our clients on a regular basis remotely. They're very appreciative of our response and our ability to transition the work from home as the pandemic has struck. They want to engage with us and to see digital transformation in their business. In financial year 'twenty, we grew at 9.8%, which is among the fastest growth rate of large vendors across the global IT industry, and this is a testimony to the fact that we are gaining market share. We also saw our digital revenue grow at a very fast rate of 38%, and that's another area where we can see that we are gaining market share.
The next question, what will be the impact of slowdown in the economy on the operating revenues and EBITDA for H1 financial year 2021? The question shareholder name is Vishraad Dilip Vohra. In the near term, we do see an impact on our business. The company anticipates some slowing as a consequence of the global crisis. This is impacting the closure of some new deals decision cycles across various verticals.
However, we see in the medium term and the longer term much more benefits and positive activity across the business. Operating margins will see a headwind due to some challenges from utilization in the near term, which will try and offset through lower overheads, a lower travel cost and cost optimization that we have already kicked in. We have a strong balance sheet and have responded fast to continue and the costs to ensure our financial resilience. Infosys is poised to confront the challenge and help its clients navigate through it as well and emerge resilient from this crisis. The next question, I would like to understand how will this new work from home scenario have an impact on margins in terms of CapEx and operating cost that will have to be incurred to set up this infrastructure on a permanent basis and what would be annual recurring CapEx and OpEx towards this.
The shareholder name is Harit Shah. Work from home will create business disruption due to revenue impact but will also create short term utilization challenges on the margin. We expect gross margins to be offset by cost takeout, higher offshoring and lower travel costs. Due to the slowing growth resulting from the crisis, our CapEx needs will also reduce in the short term. We will reassess our long term CapEx plans based on how the situation evolves.
The next question, does the company have any plan to acquire foreign IT Cup firms in the near future? The shareholder name is Sabiyu Rahman Kundu Vael. The answer, we are actively looking at acquisitions outside India. The focus of those will be in the digital areas, specifically on cloud or on the data side and also could be focused on business platforms. The current could offer us opportunities for acquisitions, and we have a healthy pipeline that we have on a regular basis.
The next question, what is the business plan future after COVID-nineteen? And how impacted will the IT industry be? The shareholder name is Naval Kishore. The pandemic itself will have an impact in the near term. In the medium and long term, we continue to see that the technology side will have a lot of positive traction with our clients, especially as it relates to cloud and vision, as it relates to cybersecurity.
We have quickly pivoted our focus on those areas of cost efficiency and areas of consolidation. So while we see a near term impact in the medium and long term, we continue to see actually a good traction in many of those areas. Next question, what are Infosys' plans for enhancing their artificial intelligence capabilities in financial year 'twenty one and beyond? The shareholder name, Ronald Rajpal. Artificial intelligence is a core area for our company for many years.
We have a dedicated service line in helping our clients leverage AI in their processes and for their automation tasks. We are building AI capabilities in our data analytics practice for predictive analysis on our edge of platforms which use AI and machine learning extensively. AI related techniques are becoming pervasive. We'll see this is to be a crucial capability. We are also using a lot of AI related courses in our reskilling platform, both on Lex and Wingspan.
And we expect to leverage strong partnerships we have with 3rd party AI solutions for the benefit of our clients. Next question. First of all, thank you to the Infosys management for the opportunity of joining via VC. Certainly, in the future, even if the pandemic wasn't here, this seems really great that many can join in and get first hand experience. I have two questions for the management.
First is, what will be the future of cloud computing and AI? Shareholder name is Shobha Dujani. On AI, the points I just shared will be relevant. On cloud computing, it's a very large area of growth for all of our clients. We have been extremely proactive with a good set of capabilities.
And also, we have built partnerships with the large cloud providers and now with 2 of the emerging cloud providers as well, we believe we are extremely well positioned to benefit from the cloud activities as they will develop. Those are all the questions in this first round for me. Praveen, over to you, please.
Okay. Sorry. Thanks, Philippe. The first question for me is, in this pandemic, when most people are working from home, can Infosys play a role in providing education from home using technology? The shareholder name is Ashad Yunus Modi.
We have invested in our NEXT platform, which provides us ability for anyone to learn anytime, anywhere, 20 fourseven. Using that platform, our employees can access learning content, they can interact with instructors, they can take regular assignments and they can get certified as well. Our clients are also excited about making this platform available for their own employees for accelerated learning opportunities. We have extended this platform to them and it is called Wingspan. Likewise, for engineering graduates in India, we have also a version of this platform called InfitiQ, where they are able to get access to high quality computer science education.
In U. S. As well, we have opened up Pathfinders Online Institute, an online learning platform for teachers, school children and their families so that they can access high quality computer science education from home for free? The second question is, during this COVID pandemic era, when many companies are opting to lay off tons of employees to cut down operating costs, the shareholder would like to know whether Infosys is planning to do something on similar lines. Shareholder name is Abhishek Singhal.
Given our overall business situation and our long term commitment to our employees, we have no plans for March layoffs. We continue our performance based exits in line with our earlier practice. There is a question from Imran Akkar. Is working from home affecting the productivity of deliverables? The response is, we have had very positive stories from our projects and client stakeholders.
We have as you are aware, we have moved about 93% of our workforce to remote working in early April. And at peak, we had about 97% of our people working from home. Initial benchmarking shows that we have been able to maintain productivity as well as all the deliverables to our clients. And we have not seen any client escalations or SLA misses on account of work from home. The next question is, what percentage of your workforce is currently working from home?
How do you see this changing in the coming weeks, months? What is the steady state you envisage? There have been similar questions from few shareholders. Their names are Om Pratar Subrao, Venkateswaran S, Dhanghir Dhanush Vasdev Rao. So currently, as I said, we have about 95% of our workforce working from home.
At peak, we had about 97%. Today, we have about under 5% working from office. We are not in a hurry to start working from office. We want to do it in a very slow and calibrated manner, keeping in mind the safety and security of our employees. And in the long term, we envisage a hybrid model where one would have the flexibility to work from either office or work from home.
There will always be times when people have to work from office, even though they may have flexibility and ability to work from home. This will depend on the nature of the project as well as client comfort. So it's very difficult at this stage to envisage what the percentage would be. But our endeavor is to make sure that we have an environment and operating model, which allows us gives us the flexibility to either work from office or work from home. Then the next question is, what would be the impact of H1B visa restrictions imposed by U.
S? They have been asked by a couple of shareholders, Amit Prakash Bhonsle and Anuraba Bhattacharya. We are constantly monitoring the developments in the U. S. Regarding immigration rules, and we believe Infosys is well prepared to address any near term challenges as a result of our strong localization strategy and a resilient business model.
In the last 24 months, we have implemented our localization initiatives at scale in U. S, recruiting more than 10,000 U. S. Nationals or permanent residents and have significantly reduced our dependency on visas. Currently, about 60% of our U.
S. Employees are visa independent. The next question is, what is the outlook on new hires, especially lateral hires? And how has the attrition rate been over the past quarter? Shareholder name is Vikas AUG.
We have ensured remote onboarding for our lateral joints this quarter. We have committed that we will honor all the offers made by us and look forward to welcoming the new in portions. Our attrition date has declined over the last few quarters, thanks to our employee engagement initiatives and robust growth rates, which gives opportunity for employees for career growth. We expect to see further decline in attrition in the coming quarters. Next question is, Infosys has not had any presence in Northeast India where there are 7 states and Guwahati is part of all.
Any plan for expansion and capture of the market? Our shareholder name is Suranjan Sharma. In the Eastern part, we have a presence in Bhonaiswara right now and we also have plans for expanding in Calcutta. But given the new normal, it's very difficult to envisage the post pandemic situation. So given that in the near term, we are not planning to open any new offices or invest anymore in incremental infrastructure spend.
But once we have clarity on the long term normal post the pandemic, we will definitely take this into account. Next question is, what implications that company foresee on its financial operations from the ongoing tensions from China and other global issues like depreciation in the value of rupee. Shareholder name is Piyush Vinod Sanchiti. We are a global company with operations in many countries across the world and have clients in China who are largely serviced locally by our China based employees. We are, of course, deeply concerned about the recent escalation in the geopolitical tensions.
At this stage, we have not seen any disruptions in our operations. We will comply with government directives in any of the countries that we operate in. Regarding the movement in currencies, we have an active hedging strategy to tide our currency volatility. Next question is from Shriram Sampat. Request an update on the GST software as news item appeared prominently that the top executives of the company were summoned by the Ministry of Finance regarding the software glitch.
We are working with both DSTN and the government in addressing the issues raised. Today, the system is working fine. And based on our advice, GSDN has also staggered the filing dates in order for us to bring down the load that was assisting the system on the last day. Next question is, why can't our company diversify into slightly non traditional areas like developing an app that is a competitor to TikTok? Shareholder name is Shubham Baratia.
This is a good question and a good suggestion. We continuously look for business opportunities and expanding our footprint and getting into new areas like products and platforms. We will definitely consider this. And that's the end of the question in this round. And I will now pass it on to Nilanjan.
Thank you, Praveen. We've got a couple of questions on dividend. So I'll take them 1 by 1. There's a question from Sushil Hakkar. Will your dividend policy be maintained?
The Board has revised its capital allocation policy in FY 2020 to return approximately 85% of free cash flows to shareholders over a 5 year period till FY 2024 through a combination of semiannual dividends and or share buyback and or special dividends subject to applicable laws and requisite approvals. There is no change in that policy. The second question from Bisvarup Ganguly. Can the company get any interim dividend this year? The company and the Board will take a decision on interim dividend for FY 'twenty one in due
course.
In spite of earnings, a good income, the dividend paid is less than that of the previous year. Is it possible to increase the same? This is a question by J. Raghuraj Raman. Given the COVID related uncertainties, it becomes very important to ensure liquidity in the business.
Many companies globally have stopped this dividend due to uncertainty. Despite this, the Board has approved INR 9.50 as final dividend, equaling the total regular dividend paid in FY 2019 of INR 17.5. The board will return 85% of free cash flows approximately to shareholders over a 5 year period as per the capital allocation policy. Any possibility of stock split? And what about dividend distribution policy?
This is a question from Anandu Vitthal Nayak. I have already mentioned about the dividend distribution policy. The Board will consider the stock splits if there is a need at an opportune time in the future. What is the year on year split of organic growth versus inorganic growth due to acquisitions? Example, Brilliant Basics or Stata.
This is a question from R. Santosh. Overall growth, as you know, is 9.8% for FY 2020 in constant currency terms. This includes Stata JVs, Luedo Acquisitions and Simplus Acquisitions, excluding which the organic growth for FY 2020 was over 8% in constant currency terms.
There is
an increase in the total expenditure, I. E, INR 11,142 crores in 20 eighteentwenty 19 and INR 6,901 crores in 20 19, 2020. Please let me know the reason for the same. There's a question from Vijit Chandrakam Joshi. The cost of sales was 66.9% of revenue as compared to 65.2% during the previous year.
This is mainly on account of increase in employee cost and cost of technical subcontractors, which increased in 2020 on account of increase in volumes, increase in compensation and increase in technical subcontractors to meet the talent front, partially offset by our cost optimization measures, including on-site mix. Why is operating margin going down year on year from 25% in 2016 to 21% in 2020? This is a question from Ishan Sharma. Our operating margins were very steady in FY 2017 2018. You may recall that we spoke of specific investments in the business to enhance our digital capabilities, increased localization, retraining our employees and investing in strengthening our sales team.
We made these investments in FY twenty nineteen. In addition, we have had every year salary increases in line with industry practice, pricing pressure on the core part of our business, offset by cost optimization, increase in digital business and currency benefits. These were the primary reasons for the drop in profitability. We have shown margin recovery and resilience through FY 2020 and hope to continue on that path going forward, barring the near term pressures due to COVID related issues. Operating margins have come down from 22.8% in FY 2019 to 21.3% in FY 2020.
Why is there any specific reason for this fall? This is from Mr. K. S. Balasubramaniam.
Our operating margin in FY 2020 was 21.3%, which decreased over FY 2019 by 150 basis points. Net cost optimization benefit from higher offshoring, pyramid, lean and automation was offset due to the salary increase of 160 basis points. We also had higher Visa costs in FY 2020. All this led to 150 basis point drop in operating margin in FY 2020. When can the company go back to EBITDA margin in excess of 26 percent?
We have a very focused margin improvement program that is looking at both operating levers as well as some strategic shifts through leveraging automation. We don't have a long term margin guidance in place. Can you let me know our business segmentation in terms of AI, digital, data, cloud and so on? This is from Sundaram Mathuri. We declared the digital revenues by business segment, and it is then paid $278,000,000 of the annual report.
The digital pillars are there in investor presentation Page number 12. Have any bonus shares been declared in the financial year 2021? This is from Vimal Kumar M. There have been no bonus shares declared for FY 2020. With that, I will pass on to Manikantha.
Thank you, Nilanjan. There were a few questions. I'll go through them. There was a question from Mr. Mohit Agarwal.
The question is, as a shareholder, I am interested for the capital application of my share. I'd like to know if the company desires in this AGM or anytime in the future bonus to its members. The answer is the Company has issued 1:one bonus shares in the year 2019. The Board will consider at an appropriate time in the future an issuance of bonus shares. There was a question from Thomas P.
Joshua and the question is how can I view the statutory registers? And there are similar questions in that regard by Mr. Kumkum Rathi, Nishant S. Shirke, Amit Kumar Gupta. And the response is, as mentioned earlier in this AGM, for inspecting the statutory registers, kindly send an email to investorsinfosys.com from your registered email ID along with your contact details.
The register will be made available to you for electronic inspection. There was a question from Mr. George Alexander asking why is the participation in the AGM on a first come, first serve basis? And there are similar questions from couple of other shareholders. And the response is, as per the circular issued by Ministry of Corporate Affairs, companies should arrange a facility having a capacity to allow at least 1,000 members to participate on a 1st come, 1st served basis.
However, the company had not put any restrictions on the number of shareholders participating in this meeting. We had overwhelming participation from all the shareholders across the country, across the globe. The Chairman will mention the number of shareholders participated in this meeting over the video conference in the closing remarks. With that, I hand over to Chairman, Mr. Nandan Nilekani.
Thank you, Mani. And now we will come to the 2nd round of questions. These are questions that were asked in the video conference and we will do it in the same order. I don't have any specific questions to be answered from the video conference questions, so video and audio conference questions. So I will hand over to Salil.
Thank you. There are a few questions that have come to me from the video questions. Thank you for the questions. I'll start with them. The first question, economic downside, good time for acquisitions.
And this is a shareholder name, Mrs. Patel. We have a very active program to look at acquisitions. We are looking at acquisitions in the area of the digital focus, whether that's in cloud or in data. We're also looking at acquisitions in some specific geographies.
We feel that these acquisitions are actively being considered, and there's a good pipeline that we're looking at. The next question will be lockdown impact on business. Will India China political situation our business? The shareholder name is Humayun. The first part of the question was already answered separately, which talked about how we are doing the work from home.
So I won't repeat. On the second part of the question with respect to China, We are a global company with operations in many countries, including in China. A lot of our work that we do in China is being serviced by our employees within China. I was deeply concerned with the recent escalation in the geopolitical tension. At this time, we've not seen any disruption of our work in China.
We will comply with the government directives in all of the countries we operate in going forward as we've always done. Next question, status of performance of companies which were previously held Shareholder name is Simha. We had previously held assets of Panaya and Calidus for sale. However, in April 2019, we had announced that we had taken them off the market as we had not received a proposal that met our expectations. We have subsequently implemented plans to integrate them more closely to refocus their activities and to bring them closer to what our focus in the market is.
We are making steady progress on these plans. Those are all the questions from me. Praveen, I hand it over to you.
Thank you, Salit. The first question is, are we continuing with our recruitment plan under current situation? Shareholder name is Humayun. We are committed to honoring all the offers we have made and are in the process of reviewing the joining dates for the same. We are evaluating the pace of hiring for remainder of FY 2021 to arrive at an optimal number of hires to meet our business requirements.
Overall, we expect lateral hiring to continue in some manner and limited to skills with our niche. The second question is, what is the expected reduction in cost of lease rental due to COVID? As we said, these are early days. In the new normal, it is will be a hybrid model where we will have employees partly working from home and partly working from office. At this stage, it is very difficult to determine what percentage of employees will work from office and what percentage will work from home.
Having said that, we are looking at opportunities for reducing cost in every aspect of our business. The next question is, can the company spend more towards CSR? Shareholder name Anjai. As we mentioned earlier, we have already Infosys Foundation has already spent INR 120 crores towards mitigating the COVID impact. InFOI Foundation has a defined plan for spending on CSR as approved by the Board.
In addition to that, we also invest in CSR activities across the globe, which is over and above the CSR limits. This request will, however, be placed before the Board for suitable consideration. Next question is, cyber threat and data security in the wake of COVID, what is the framework that the company is using? Shareholder name, Anish Hedde. As part of our cybersecurity strategy, we have deployed robust security controls to safeguard all our endpoints, system and network and cloud infrastructure against cyber attacks directed towards Infosys.
The different cybersecurity solutions we have implemented have inbuilt artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities, which are vital for securing the organization. The existing IT remote access infrastructure was scaled up in order to enable employees to securely connect and work from home. We will continue to monitor the situation and continue to invest in technology to mitigate any risks from new cyber threats. That's all I had. I will now pass it on to Vilanjan.
Thank you, Praveen. There were a couple of questions on the subsidiaries. So the first question was, what are the subsidiaries under the loss and the strategy for the converting them to profit? And a similar question was on what is the profitability of Infosys China? And this is coming from Anirud.
We work with each subsidiary company for improving their profitability over a period of time. Most of our subsidiaries also work closely and in synergy with other Infosys entities. We closely manage these businesses to ensure that they are accretive to the entire Infosys Group as a whole. 2nd question, what are the plans to improve operating margins for FY 2021? This is from Nath.
Our big focus will be accelerated cost takeouts. While we have made enormous progress on this during the last few years, this is even more critical for FY 2021 in the period of the COVID headwinds. We have embarked on a series of steps to address near term margin pressure emanating from lower utilization due to supply and demand mismatches, which include complete fees on discretionary spending. We will also continue to look at the entire gamut of other cost levers we have as the situation evolves. Our ongoing strategic cost optimization levers around automation, pyramid rationalization, on-site offshore mix, subcontractors will continue as in the earlier years.
We are also looking at reduction in CapEx barring any committed or non discretionary expense. Finance charges of INR 114 crores. Please provide details. This question is from Simha. The company adopted the new accounting standard INDAS 116 on leases effective 1st April 2019.
Finance cost relates to interest on lease liability, which is calculated using incremental borrowing rate. Can we hope for better dividend next year? This is from Mr. CAB, Simha. The Board will take a call on the dividend payout every year after considering various factors, including a capital allocation policy, cash generation and deployment needs.
Why is our PE lower compared with industry? This is from Keith T. Shaw. We don't comment on any stock price and valuations. As a company and management, we are focused on shareholder returns and a large part of the management remuneration is aligned to the TSR metric, as you will recall, the shareholders which approved in 2019 ESOP plan.
That is all from me. Mani, over to you.
I think all the questions were answered by Salil, Praveen and Nilanjan. With that, I will hand over back to Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mani. Members may note that e voting on the NSDL platform will continue to be available for the next 30 minutes. Therefore, members who have not cast a vote yet are requested to do so. The Board of Directors has appointed Parameshwarji Hegde, practicing company secretary, as a scrutinizer to supervise the e voting process. Further, I hereby authorize Manikantha, the company's secretary, to declare the result of the voting and place the results on the website of the company at the earliest.
The resolutions are as set forth in a notation will be passed today subject to receipt of requisite number of votes. We had 1771 members participating today in this 39th Annual General Meeting. So we are grateful to all our shareholders from all over the world who have come in by video conferencing, 1771 people participated. Thank you all for attending the meeting, and I hereby declare the proceedings as closed. Thank you very much, and see you next year.