Most Infosys staff to get 5-7% pay hike; seniors, onsite being finalised

 Infosys staff learned earlier this week that most of them will get salary hikes in the range of 5-7%, at a time when founder Narayana Murthy is fighting to keep his 1,50,000 people team motivated.

While the company is expected to make public the salary hike plans on the day of its earnings results in April, "internally staff were told on the company's intranet," a person with direct knowledge told ET.

The salary hikes that have been finalised includes those up to the JL6 level (Job Level 6), which means junior to mid-level staff that would comprise the "bulk of the company," the person said.

Salary increases are yet to be finalised for both onsite employees and JL7 and higher positions, typically those in relatively senior leadership positions, such as assistant vice presidents, vice presidents and so on.

The company will announce salary increments for the fiscal year starting April during its financial results announcement on April 16, Infosys said in a statement.

"The new salary hikes come nine months after we announced our last salary increases in July 2013," Infosys added, in the statement.

When Narayana Murthy returned in June to try and pull the company out of the morass it was stuck in, following two years of industry lagging performance by then, one of the first decisions attributed to him was an average 8% pay hike for most staff in India, in July 2013.

In January, Murthy also said the company was looking to return to its old practice of announcing salary increments effective April.

"We will leave no stone unturned," Murthy told investors including those from Franklin Templeton and SBI Mutual Fund on Wednesday, in getting the company back to its glory days.

He also said the company's leadership was making the effort to keep employees motivated.

Tech Mahindra Forays Into Enterprise Device Testing With An NFC Lab

Tech Mahindra has officially unveiled a Near Field Communications (NFC) test lab in Bangalore.

The lab will offer NFC Testing and Consulting services to companies that are interested in setting up secured payment processing platforms using the NFC Standard of communication and data transmission, shared Sirisha Voruganti, Head, Device Testing, Tech Mahindra,

“With this test lab, we are geared to help the Chipset manufacturers, OEMs and Service Providers to reduce the failure rates to NIL in the field and hasten their market growth. Our Lab focuses on troubleshooting and consulting with global clients while providing cost-effective test solutions,”

Tech Mahindra’s lab is ISO 17025 Accredited has already met the Wave 1 Test Requirements as mandated by the NFC Forum. Moreover, the lab is well equipped to even meet the upcoming Wave 2 Test Requirements. Apart from establishing this lab, the company had acquired Type Approval Lab in Lund, Southern Sweden from Sony. The Sweden based lab is well equipped to provide end-to-end test solutions to device manufacturers and Global Carriers.

Why did the company feel the need to establish a lab just for NFC? There are labs established to ensure mobile payments are secure. Even the apex Bank, The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) officially launched one to ensure that Mobile based payments take place in the most secure, yet the simplest of ways.

However, smartphones featuring NFC communications module are growing in large numbers. Though still in its nascent stage, NFC offers one of the fastest modes of secure payment transactions. But perhaps it most appealing factor is that NFC offers transactions which are relatively petty. Consumers and buyers are often perplexed when they have to pay in ‘change’. Small transactions often require these customers to carry coins of small denominations. NFC can easily do away with the obligation of carrying this weighty form of currency.

With more than 400 Million phones featuring NFC already in circulation, Tech Mahindra’s Lab might have been established just in time. What do you think?

Skype can be a universal translator: Microsoft Research

Microsoft Research, which delves deep into fields like computing and information technology, is in sharper focus after the software behemoth's acquisition of Nokia's phone business in September last year, and its attempts to gain a firmer foothold in the rapidly growing mobile devices segment, dominated by Google and Apple. There's also the niche area of wearable technology which is on the brink of going mainstream.

Peter Lee, who recently took over as the head of Microsoft Research, shared his thoughts on emerging technologies on a recent to Bangalore.

Was Microsoft slow in moving to the mobile?

For the past 20 years, MSR has been doing research relevant to the mobile. We were not late in porting cutting-edge technologies to consumer devices. MSR tells the product line about the way the world is going. But the world isn't always ready to take the product. Microsoft was one of the first companies to sell tablets with features like speech and handwriting recognition. Arguably we were too early.

 

 What's the progress in speech-recognition technology?

For 11 or 12 years, the quality of speech systems didn't improve from any company, and many of them gave up. But we kept the research going. In 2009, we had a major breakthrough that saw 30% improvement in speech recognition quality. People are using speech a lot in Xbox One. It's magical when I go into my living room, say "Xbox On", everything turns on, and immediately it says "Hello Peter, Welcome Back", because it recognizes my face and my voice. Research is not about speed, but also about the longevity. It's a lot about patience as well.

Can you elaborate on that breakthrough?

This breakthrough used a concept in artificial intelligence called Deep Learning, which in turn is based on neural network. The system learns by associating certain representation. The learning can be so good that if you show the picture of a dog, the system will not only recognize it as dog, but will also tell you the breed. It's like a child learning to recognize something.

What are its applications?

There are many. For example, when you give a search for 'patent leather shoes for teenager' it understands you want to shop. So, it understands not just the meaning, but the intention as well. We provide translations for over 45 languages.

At the height of the end-of-the-world buzz in 2012, there was a rush of tourists to the Mayan state in Mexico. The government there worked with Microsoft to have the Mayan languages translated for the tourists.

A few years ago, chief research officer Rick Rashid demonstrated speech recognition breakthrough via machine translation that converted his spoken English into English text, then to Chinese text and finally to Chinese in his own voice - all live while he was addressing a group of students. We are now looking at Skype and wondering if it could be a universal translator.

What's the status of wearable technology?

We are doing a lot of research in wearable technology. The fact is most of the sensors in the devices are of poor quality. There is a lot of noise that the sensors don't filter out. We think that Deep Learning can get past the noise. One of our focus areas is the GPS sensor. There is an algorithm in GPS that is extremely power hungry. By leveraging big cloud infrastructure, we will be able to deliver an energy-efficient GPS. We are working with wildlife authorities in Africa, and testing them: for example, to track the movement of zebras.

We want a billion Indians on WhatsApp: Jan Koum

WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum took time off from his hectic schedule at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, on what was his 38th birthday, to talk to ET about the $19 billion deal with Facebook and what advice he would give entrepreneurs. Edited excerpts: 

It's said that you applied for a job at both Twitter and Facebook. I was interviewed for Facebook but nothing really worked out. 

What made you start WhatsApp? How did you hit upon the idea? What did you do that was different from other messenger services?

I got an iPhone and I started to experiment trying to build an application for an iPhone. First, we focused on using your address book. Everybody else was using user names or pin codes, like BBM... Skype you had to get an approval... these were all complicated processes. We just wanted to simplify it. If you have somebody's phone number in your address book, you are on. 

We were the first guys to do it, we were actually the first mover. Everybody else came in and tried to copy us, but they weren't successful. We were global from day one. We focused on translations, we added Italian, German, Spanish, Russian, into the applications from day one because we understood that it's the power of communication, that people want to communicate with people in other countries. 

We hired really smart people, our first set of engineers was extremely talented and allowed us to build a foundation that enabled us to build everything on top of it. 

What, if any, is the monetisation strategy of WhatsApp?

Today, it's a simple one - we are free for the first year of subscription and then it's a dollar a year. There are no plans to do anything else. We are pretty happy with this. For voice, we haven't finalized it internally yet but we might do something different in terms of implementation but fundamentally it will be very similar. 

Some are skeptical about the quality of voice services that can be offered by you. Please comment.

We are going to make sure voice works just as well. I understand that there are bandwidth constraints, network constraints, but we will take the same approach to voice that we took to (messaging) five years ago, which is focus on quality, simplicity, performance so that it's the world standard for voice just as messaging it's the world standard. 

Would you have done the deal at a lower value?

The important thing to talk about here is not the price. Mark asked me to be on the board of Facebook and I'm extremely flattered. We talked about this as a partnership and not as an acquisition. WhatsApp will continue to remain independent. There are no changes planned to the product. Nothing really changes from the user point of view. And, so when we were talking about this deal, we were not as interested in terms of the numbers but as a partnership between two great companies who share the same vision. 

What will Facebook's contribution be to your voice service? Any more hiring?

Should be none. We are still an independent company and we will continue to be an independent company even after the deal closes. But we do plan to grow, absolutely. We are going to have to hire more people to support more users and build new things like voice. 

What plans do you have with the money that you get?

I only have one idea, that is WhatsApp, and I am going to continue to focus on that. I have no plans to build any other ideas. The day the deal closes, it's going to be like any other day when we will go back to work. 

How does it feel to have this success?

It's rewarding but again I don't spend any time thinking about it. A lot of my time, effort and focus is spent on WhatsApp. And that to me is more valuable and rewarding than to work on anything else. 

Has the world changed for you post the Facebook deal?

None. Still the same. We still have a lot of work to do. We still have a lot of people who will get onto smartphones, we still have a lot of bugs to fix and improvements to make. Our mission is still not done. 

Do you fear someone else could build a better message/photo sharing platform and make WhatsApp irrelevant. How will you sustain WhatsApp's competitive advantage?

We have always had people copy us. It's not shocking, if anything it's flattering. But what's important for us is to continue to get our product right. I spend more time worrying about ourselves, that we're doing the right thing. 

Did you expect the success?

Probably not to this level. The size of this deal shows how important communication is in today's world. Communication is at the very core of our society. That's what makes us human.

How important is India as a market?

It's a very critical market for us. Ironically, I grew up watching Indian movies as a kid in Russia. I am quite familiar with Bollywood. I grew up watching Disco Dancer, I watched it some 20 times as a kid. India is important from a personal level too. 

We want all smartphone users (in India) to be on WhatsApp. Then if that number is a billion, then it's a billion. Currently, over 40 million. So we still have some ways to go before we hit a billion. 

When do you plan to visit India?

Hopefully soon. Are you inviting me? I wanted to for a long time. My schedule is a little busy but hopefully this year. 

What are the three things that young entrepreneurs should focus on when launching a startup?

Focus is an important part of it. A lot of times people start out with a lot of good ideas, but then they don't execute. They lose the purity of their vision. You end up running around in circles. 

Hiring smart people, smart engineers. Focus on users right from day one. 

Would your new office have WhatsApp signage outside?

We haven't decided yet. We will think about it when we come back. 

What next for Jan Koum?

I have work to do. I get on a plane and I go back and have to go back to the office and work.