Infosys plans $100M innovation fund for new ideas, spin-outs

Cash-rich software major Infosys Ltd is planning an innovation fund to the tune of $100 million in order to focus on new ideas, products and platforms, according to its CEO and managing director SD Shibulal.

The new fund will not only focus on ideas coming from within the company but will also be used to fund innovations coming from outside the organisation, he added.

"We have many employees having innovative ideas working for us, but these ideas cannot be expanded on the premise. So we have decided to pick these ideas, invest in them to develop them and spin them off," Shibulal told reporters at a Press conference in Bangalore after announcing the quarterly results.

The Bangalore-headquartered company has been focusing more on IP-related products, platforms and solutions (PPS) business as part of its proposed Infosys 3.0 strategy. It has already identified a few areas.

It is not the first time Infosys is looking at such investments but the announcement makes it a more formal programme, although the firm did not share details about the investment plan.

Infosys already had a few successful spin-outs such as the VAS firm OnMobile, which has gone through a bad patch recently with alleged corporate governance irregularities involving its promoter. In the past, it had also seen another spin-out in Boston-based Yantra Corp, a management solutions company which was acquired by SBC Communications for $170 million.

(Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal)