We recently spoke with Infosys on its sustainability strategy, where its philosophy is to ensure its business, clients' businesses, and ecosystems are all sustainable. It approaches sustainability at the enterprise level across Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) dimensions.

Infosys started its sustainability journey in 2008 and says it became carbon neutral in 2020, some 30 years ahead of the 2050 timeline set by the Paris Agreement. Recent achievements include a 55% reduction in per capita electricity consumption compared to the 2008 baseline and 50% of electricity coming from renewables. The company has achieved 60 MW of total installed solar capacity and a 64% reduction in consumption of water across campuses. Overall, Infosys has achieved an 83.6% reduction in Scope 3 emissions, including reductions from business travel, employee commute, upstream leased assets, waste, and work from home. Infosys claims by 2022, for every project, there will be a sustainability aspect for clients.

We have also seen recent ESG developments from other IT services vendors, including Capgemini's commitment to achieving carbon neutrality for its operations no later than 2025 and its ambition to be net-zero by 2030. Also, Atos announced end-to-end decarbonization capabilities to enable clients to accelerate their journeys to net-zero. Atos invests in decarbonization measurement, including reducing onsite support to benefit carbon emission and utilizing the Atos Green app to educate and give end-users visibility of their carbon footprint.

Infosys capabilities and IP

Infosys is positioning itself to be clients' end-to-end sustainability partner, combining IP and a consulting-led approach. Key capabilities include its ESG platform (ECOWatch), powered by Microsoft applications in Azure to enable data capture and analysis of sustainability KPIs and ESG metrics, IoT-based energy, water, and waste management solutions, and KRITI 4.0 for asset maintenance. Additional Infosys capabilities include integrated command and control center (AR/VR in the field), Smart Spaces platform, and PLM and circular commerce material compliance. The Infosys Wingspan Platform is used for knowledge and change management, and Infosys Meridian for sustainability events and communities.

Infosys has recently announced a strategic partnership with The Economist Group to enable and accelerate sustainability solutions and drive impact through a business-to-business model and unlock long-term sustainability thinking across global enterprises, and is aiming to deliver the following benefits to its clients:

• Making an impact on the triple bottom-line of people, profit, and prosperity
• Attracting a new wave of sustainability-minded clients, supply chain partners, and employees
• Enhancing ESG attractiveness to investors and brand reputation
• Securing resiliency in uncertain conditions.

Infosys sees six distinct aspects to clients' sustainability journeys: sustainability plan, growth plan, digital & physical assets, addressing the supply chain, offset strategy, and sustainability-first culture.

Focus on smart buildings capability

From an ESG perspective, buildings account for 40% of GHG emissions. Consequently, we are seeing a number of vendor capabilities in support of smart buildings and offices using workplace safety platforms and IoT-enabled wayfinding solutions. This includes providing health testing and biometric building entry, including voice and gesture control to facilitate a safe return to the office for clients. These services are often integrated with third-party platforms, particularly the ServiceNow safe workplace suite.

Here, Infosys is partnering with several global hyper-scalers to offer its Smart Buildings and Spaces offering, managing the lifecycle of solutions, including pathfinder and visitor management. In addition, Infosys offers Azure health and wellness platform focused on occupancy wellbeing and health and safety. Also, Infosys has capabilities to enable the physical workplace to become digital by installing and managing IoT devices, beacons, sensors, and wayfinding solutions. Employee-centric solutions include AR/XR experience, intelligent workplace platform/return to the workplace, employee experience, and touchless experience. These solutions are complemented by an integrated command center, IoT-enabled occupancy analytics, connected field services, Infosys intelligent workplace solutions, and low-carbon eco spaces. From a sustainability perspective, key capabilities include water management, carbon monitoring & control, solid waste management, energy assessment and consulting, and Greenfield building consulting (LEED).

Infosys enabled RXR Realty, a leading real-estate owner, investor, operator, and developer with a commercial portfolio of 26 office buildings in and around NYC, to deploy an Azure-based health and wellness platform focused on occupancy wellbeing and health and safety, incorporating Face Mask Detection, Social Distancing, Indoor Air Quality, Monitoring Occupancy, Energy Management, and Remote Operations.

Additional capabilities across decarbonization include smart metering, smart grids, renewables, electric cars, IoT sensor deployment, command centers, and predictive analytics (including predictive maintenance) across utilities, focusing on optimizing machinery, facilities and operations to reduce costs and overall energy and resource use.

ESG vision 2030

Through its Sustainable Business Practice, Infosys has launched its ESG vision and ambitions for 2030, which include:

• Environment: includes leveraging technology to support the transition to a low-carbon world and support climate change, maintaining 100% water recycling each year, and ensuring zero waste to landfill
• Social: extending digital skills to 10m people, including employees, clients' workforces, students, teachers, and communities by 2025. Empowering 80m lives through tech for good programs and having 45% of women in the Infosys workforce (currently 38.6%); also, delivering 33% of work through flexible/remote work options and driving employee wellness and experience
• Governance: includes building sustainable and responsible supply chains, adopting leading data privacy standards across global operations, and upholding the digital trust of stakeholders.

Summary

Infosys became carbon neutral in 2020, has a clear ESG strategy through 2030, and estimates that it has enabled clients to achieve a 30% reduction in per-capita energy consumption and a 20% improvement in operational efficiencies. 

We expect Infosys will increase its industry-specific capabilities in support of clients’ ESG and carbon-neutral strategies. Across Digital Workplace Services, there is a greater focus on supporting clients’ ESG and carbon-neutral agendas through Evergreen services, including the use of AR/VR in the field to reduce onsite field visits, remote working and onboarding, smart buildings, and use of Green apps to notify users of their carbon footprint. There is also a clear focus on employee experience and wellness and digital re-skilling to support ESG agendas. Here, we expect Infosys to see increased traction across its Wingspan learning platform, where it currently has ~2m users, as clients seek to train, re-skill, and educate employees to support future sustainability initiatives.