Infosys Technologies Limited (BSE: 500209, NASDAQ: INFY) is a multinational information technology services company headquartered in Bangalore, India. It is one of India's largest IT companies with 103,905 professionals (including subsidiaries) as of Jun 30, 2009.It has offices in 22 countries and development centers in India, China, Australia, UK, Canada and Japan.
History
Infosys was founded on July 2, 1981 in Pune by N. R. Narayana Murthy and six others: Nandan Nilekani, N. S. Raghavan, Kris Gopalakrishnan, S. D. Shibulal, K. Dinesh and Ashok Arora,[4] with N. S. Raghavan officially being the first employee of the company. Murthy started the company by borrowing INR 10,000 from his wife Sudha Murthy. The company was incorporated as "Infosys Consultants Pvt Ltd.", with Raghavan's house in Model Colony, north-central Pune as the registered office.

In 1982, Infosys opened an office in Bangalore which soon became its headquarters.

Infosys went public in 1993. Interestingly, Infosys IPO was undersubscribed but it was "bailed out" by US investment banker Morgan Stanley which picked up 13% of equity at the offer price of Rs. 95 per share. The share price surged to Rs. 8,100 by 1999 making it the costliest share on the market at the time.[6] At that time, Infosys was among the 20 biggest companies by market capitalization on the Nasdaq well ahead of Adobe Systems, Novell and Lycos.

According to Forbes magazine, since listing on the Bombay Stock Exchange till the year 2000, Infosys' sales and earnings compounded at more than 70% a year.In the year 2000, President of the United States Bill Clinton complimented India on its achievements in high technology areas citing the example of Infosys.

In 2001, it was rated Best Employer in India by Business Today. Infosys won the Global MAKE (Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises) award, for the years 2003, 2004 and 2005, being the only Indian company to win this award and is inducted into the Global Hall of Fame for the same.

Infosys was rated best employer to work for in 2000, 2001, and 2002 by Hewitt Associates. In 2007, Infosys received over 1.3 million applications and hired fewer than 3% of applicants.

BusinessWeek reported that Infosys, along with Wipro and Tata accounted for nearly 80% of the [H-1B] visa petitions approved in 2007 for the top 10 participants in the program.

In April 2009, Forbes rated Infosys among the 5 best performing companies in the software and services sector in the world.

In 2009, Infosys was considered one of the BusinessWeek's 50 Most Innovative Companies.

From December 2008 till April 2009, Infosys fired over 2500 employees for poor performance. The company has been hit hard by lower income from a crisis hit European and North American market. On April 15, 2009 Infosys reported its first ever sequential fall in its revenue in a decade during the March 2009 quarter.

Timeline
1981: Infosys is established by N. R. Narayana Murthy and six engineers in Pune, India, with an initial capital of US$ 250. Signs up its first client, Data Basics Corporation, in New York
1983: Moved its headquarters to Bangalore, the capital of Karnataka
1987: Opens first international office in Boston, US
1992: Opened its first overseas sales office in Boston.
1993: Became a public limited company in India with an initial public offering of Rs. 13 crores.
1996: First office in Europe in Milton Keynes, UK
1997: Office in Toronto, Canada
1999: First Indian company to be listed on Nasdaq on March 11.[17]
1999: Attained a SEI-CMM Level 5 ranking
2000: Opened offices in France and Hong Kong
2001: Opened offices in United Arab Emirates and Argentina
2002: Opened new offices in Netherlands, Singapore and Switzerland.
2002: Business World named Infosys "India's Most Respected Company".[18]
2002: Started Progeon, its BPO (business process outsourcing) subsidiary[19]
2003: Acquired 100% equity of Expert Information Services Pty Limited, Australia (Expert) and changed the name to Infosys Australia Pty Limited.
2004: Set up Infosys Consulting Inc., U.S. consulting subsidiary in California, U.S.
2006: Became the first Indian company to ring the NASDAQ Stock Market Opening Bell
2006: August 20, N. R. Narayana Murthy retired from his position as the executive chairman. [20]
2006: Acquired the 23% stake Citibank had in its BPO offshoot Progeon, making it a wholly owned subsidiary of Infosys and changed the name to Infosys BPO Ltd.[21]
2006: December, became the first Indian company to make it to Nasdaq-100[22]
2007: April 13, Nandan Nilekani stepped down as CEO and made way for Kris Gopalakrishnan to occupy his chair effective June 2007
2007: July 25, Infosys bags multi-million dollar outsourcing contract with Royal Philips Electronics in the area Finance & Accounting services strengthening its European operations.
2007: September, Infosys establishes a wholly-owned Latin American subsidiary, Infosys Technologies S. de R. L. de C. V., and opens its first software development center in Latin America in the city of Monterrey, Mexico.
2008: Agreed to buy British consultancy Axon Group for 407 million pounds ($753 million), but HCL Technologies outbid Infosys for 441 million pounds[23]. However, Infosys gained Rs. 180 million from the failed Axon bid.[24]
During the 14-year period from its IPO in 1993 to 2007, the price of an Infosys share increased three thousandfold. This excludes the dividends that the company has paid out over that duration.

Key industries

Infosys serves various industries through its Industrial Business Units (IBU), such as:

Banking & Capital Markets (BCM)
Communications, Media and Entertainment (CME)
Energy, Utilities and Services (EUS)
Insurance, Healthcare and Life Sciences (IHL)
Manufacturing (MFG)
Retail, Consumer Product Goods and Logistics (RETL)
New Markets and Services (NMS) : Non US and Non European markets, SaaS, Learning Services
India Business Unit (IND)
In addition to these, there are Horizontal Business Units (HBUs)

Consulting (CS)
Enterprise Solutions (ES): ERP, CRM, HCM, SCM, BI/DW, BPM-EAI
Infrastructure Management Services (IMS)
Product Engineering and Validation Services (PEVS)
Systems Integration (SI)
Finacle : Core Banking Product

Initiatives
In 1996, Infosys created the Infosys Foundation in the state of Karnataka, operating in the areas of health care, social rehabilitation and rural uplift, education, arts and culture. Since then, this foundation has spread to the Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Kerala, Orissa and Punjab. The Infosys Foundation is headed by Mrs. Sudha Murthy, wife of Chairman Narayana Murthy.

Since 2004, Infosys has embarked on a series of initiatives to consolidate and formalize its academic relationships worldwide under the umbrella of a program called AcE - Academic Entente. Through case study writing, participation in academic conferences and university events, research collaborations, hosting study trips to Infosys Development Centers and running the InStep Global Internship Program, the company communicates with important stakeholders in the academia.

Infosys' Global Internship Program, known as InStep, is one of the key components of the Academic Entente initiative. It offers live projects to interns from the universities around the world. InStep recruits undergraduate, graduate and PhD students from business, technology, and liberal arts universities to take part in an 8 to 24 week internship at one of Infosys' global offices. InStep interns are also provided career opportunities with Infosys.

In 1997 Infosys started the "Catch them Young Programme", to expose the urban youth to the world of Information Technology by conducting a summer vacation programme. The programme is aimed at developing an interest and understanding of computer science and information technology. This programme is targeted at students in Grade IX level.[25]

In 2002, the Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania and Infosys started the Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Award. This technology award recognizes enterprises and individuals who have transformed their businesses and the society leveraging information technology. Past winners include Samsung, Amazon.com, Capital One, RBS and ING Direct.

Infosys also has the largest training center for a private sector organization in Asia. The training center is located in Mysore, Karnataka. It currently accommodates 4,500 trainees each year. In 2009 a new training center has been opened which accommodates 10,000 trainee software professionals. This new center is also located in Mysore.

In 2008, Infosys along with National Institute of Advanced Studies created 'Infosys Mathematics Prize' for excellence in Mathematics research.