Infosys to expand in Europe through friendly mergers

Despite the acceptance of hostile acquisitions as alegitimate form of inorganic growth, Bangalore-base IT major, Infosys Technologies, India's India's second-largest IT services company is pursuing an altogether different tack to grow its presence overseas.

According to co founder Kris Gopalakrishnan, CEO and MD, Infosys is not looking for hostile acquisitions but for friendly mergers, which means target company must be willing to be acquired.

Outlining the company's strategy, Gopalakrishnan said Infosys was looking at the non-English speaking countries differently. He added that the company was looking at France and Germany as the first two examples in Europe where it would have a significant presence locally to expand its customer base who would be serviced from back end operations in India or China.

He added that that was the model the company was experimenting with and it would see how it went.

The Bangalore-headquartered company, gets around 26-per cent of its revenues from Europe, mostly from the UK and believes the approach would help it increase its footprint in non-English speaking European countries.

Indian IT services companies have not been able to make a significant mark in the markets in continental Europe and even Infosys has seen its efforts fall short in making any significant gains there.