Infosys, the software giant, is about to make its second startup investment under its new CEO Vishal Sikka. It will also be the company's second investment this year. The software giant is looking to invest in an Indian startup that makes air quality detectors. The investment is a part of the company's strategy to identify more and more next generation technologies under the newly appointed CEO. Vishal Sikka joined the company as a CEO in August last year.
"There is a small company we are investing in that makes an air quality detector that you can just drop in stores, in hospitals, in mines and it detects air quality and it is connected to the cloud and you can stream the data," said Sikka.
The name of the startup that Infosys has its eyes set on was not revealed by Sikka. He just revealed that the company specializes in Internet of Things (IoT), which is an emerging network of non-computing and computing devices interacting with each other and creating huge amount of data that can be easily converted into new revenue streams and business insights.
Infosys is likely to close the deal with the air quality detector maker company by April this year. “The world around us is fundamentally being reshaped by software, and IT companies are not serving IT needs. So investing in these companies is essential," said Sikka in the interview.
Infosys, India’s second biggest software company, made its first startup earlier this year. The Bangalore based IT company bought a minority stake in a startup for around $15 million (Rs.90 crore).
This new investment by Infosys syncs with Sikka’s strategy to bet big on big data and artificial intelligence. He believes that these can become big revenue earners in the future.
According to Martin Haemmig, a global expert on corporate venturing, Wipro, Infosys, TCS have all understood that "linear" growth models for outsourcing no longer holds for the future, hence, they need to look at "exponential" growth models through innovation. Haemmig gave this statement to the Economic Times.
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