Infosys History & Founding Timeline

The boardroom conflict between CEO Vishal Sikka and co-founders — centered on allegations of excessive executive compensation, strategic acquisitions, and governance practices — resulted in Sikka's departure and triggered over a year of organizational instability. Client relationships were disrupted, key executives departed, and the company ceded ground in large deal pursuits to TCS and Accenture during the period of uncertainty.

Infosys was slower than Accenture and some peers in building credible cloud transformation and mobile-first service offerings during the 2013-2016 period, when enterprise cloud adoption was accelerating rapidly. This delay allowed competitors to build stronger cloud partner ecosystems and client references, creating a catch-up challenge that required significant investment to address.

Infosys has historically been more conservative in acquisitions than Accenture, completing fewer and smaller deals that have not always accelerated capability development at the pace required to close competitive gaps. The acquisition of Lodestone Consulting for $349 million in 2012, while strategically sound in concept, underperformed integration expectations, tempering the company's subsequent acquisition ambition.

Infosys was slow to proactively increase its US local hiring in response to rising political and regulatory pressure on H-1B visa issuance during the 2017-2020 period. The delayed response created reputational and operational risk during a period of heightened scrutiny of offshore IT delivery models, and required a reactive commitment to hire 10,000 US workers to address political pressure.