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Mumbai: Infosys Ltd’s first non-founder chief executive officer Vishal Sikka believes that his New and Renew strategy to reinvigorate India’s second-largest software services company will start to have “meaningful” impact by the end of next March.

Sikka said he is pleased with the way the Bengaluru-based company is adapting to some of the disruptive technologies it has embraced, but conceded that it is taking longer than he anticipated when he took over as CEO of the 34-year-old firm in August last year.

“The reality is we are seeing far better adoption than I had imagined. I am pleased. But the tower of existing work is so big that it will take time for it to get there,” Sikka said in an interview after Infosys reported second-quarter earnings on Monday, with revenue in dollar terms improving 6% on a sequential basis.

“Has it (automation) become measurable? Yes. It is not large enough but right now it is measurable but not meaningful. I believe before the end of fiscal year (March 2016), it will become meaningful and start having a significant impact,” said Sikka.

To be sure, Sikka last year had said the benefits of Infosys embracing automation tools and new initiatives, including making its engineers adopt the user-centric approach of problem-solving called design thinking, will result in new revenue streams, and will eventually make Infosys beat slowdown blues in the October-March period of the fiscal year.

The second half is a traditionally weak period for Infosys and many of its rivals, including Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS), on account of holidays in the third quarter; decision making on outsourcing contracts in the fourth quarter get pushed back as clients take time to come up with annual budgets for technology spending.

On Monday, Infosys cut its full-year revenue growth forecast in dollar terms, citing the potential adverse effects of cross-currency movements, and warned that growth in the October-December quarter may not be better than the 0.8% increase in the year-ago period. This was primarily because the management believes client across industries were holding back on technology spending.

For this reason, Sikka explained that measures like Zero Distance is another step to make Infosys the next generation services company.

Under the Zero Distance initiative, Infosys’ management is looking to engrain innovation into each of the company’s 8,500 master projects.

Currently, Infosys claims that since the start of the year, it has brought this innovation in about 65% or 5.600 of 8,500 master projects.

“So the goal of this Zero Distance project is to improve what you are doing in the project. And the other goal is how you improve the project. Whether it is by using a better process, or delivery methodology, new software tooling,” said Sikka.

“So to give you an example, of 5600 projects, nearly 2,100 are automation-led Zero Distance innovation‎projects. And of these, 1,200 are the how bucket and 800 in the what,” said Sikka.

Understandably, many domestic and foreign brokerages continue to remain confident that Infosys is on the cusp of a turnaround and the current management’s steps should help the firm achieve its aspiration of becoming a $20 billion company by 2020.

“Infosys is improving its execution in its largest accounts and investing in employee stability (54,000 employees now trained in “design thinking” vs 39,000 by 1Q),” BNP Paribas analyst Abhiram Eleswarapu wrote in a note, titled Not much to find fault with, on Monday. Eleswarapu said many of these measures had helped Infosys generate more business from existing clients.

“Many doubted when Vishal introduced design thinking last year. We can certainly see that Infosys’ client hunting has improved. It won close to a $1 billion in large deal wins in the last quarter. So it is only fair to give time and see what will be the impact of these steps the company is taking to improve its operations,” said a Mumbai-based analyst at a foreign brokerage. He declined to be named.

Some say Infosys needs to outperform rivals consistently for the market to accept that Sikka’s strategy is working.

“By putting artificial intelligence and automation at the center of his vision, Vishal is rekindling perceptions of being an innovator. However, the Street will only be pleased if sales execution can be optimized. To catch up with its leading peers, Infosys has to outperform them consistently,” said Thomas Reuner, managing director of IT outsourcing research at HfS Research.