Infosys - A Overview

 Infosys was founded on 2 July 1981 by seven entrepreneurs, Nagavara Ramarao Narayana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani, Kris Gopalakrishnan, S. D. Shibulal, K Dinesh and with N. S. Raghavan officially being the first employee of the company. The founders started the company with an initial investment of INR 10,000. The company was incorporated as "Infosys Consultants Pvt Ltd." in Model Colony, Pune as the registered office.
 

Infosys headquarters in Bengaluru, India

Infosys went public in 1993. Interestingly, Infosys IPO was under subscribed 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. By the year 2000 Infosys's shares touched Rs. 310 before the catastrophic incident of September 11th, changed all that.

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.Infosys will invest $100 million (Rs 440 crore) on establishing a 20,000-seater campus in Shanghai.

In 2001, it was rated Best Employer in India by Business Today. 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.

Infosys was the only Indian company to win the Global MAKE (Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises) award for the years 2003, 2004 and 2005, and is inducted into the Global Hall of Fame for the same.

Global offices

Asia Pacific

India - Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Chennai, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Mangalore, Mysore, Pune, Thiruvananthapuram Kolkata(2012),[25] Australia - Melbourne, Sydney and China - Beijing, Shanghai

Hong Kong - Hong Kong, Japan - Tokyo, Mauritius - Mauritius, New Zealand - Wellington, UAE - Sharjah, Philippines - Taguig City, Fiji Island - Suva and Thailand - Bangkok

North America

Canada - Toronto, USA - Atlanta (GA), Bellevue (WA), Bridgewater (NJ), Charlotte (NC), Southfield (MI), Fremont (CA), Houston (TX), Glastonbury (CT), Lake Forest (CA), Lisle (IL), New York, Phoenix (AZ), Plano (TX), Quincy (MA), Reston (VA) and Mexico - Monterrey

Europe

Czech Republic - Brno, Belgium - Brussels, Denmark - Copenhagen, Finland - Helsinki, France - Paris, Germany - Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Italy - Milano, Norway - Oslo, Poland - Łódź, The Netherlands - Amsterdam, Spain - Madrid, Burgos, Sweden - Stockholm, Switzerland - Zürich, Geneva and UK - Canary Wharf, London

South America

Brazil - Belo Horizonte

source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infosys

Everest - The Peak

Mount Everest with a peak elevation of 29,035 feet (8850 meters), the top of Mount Everest is the world's highest point above sea level. As the world's highest mountain, climbing to the top of Mount Everest has been a goal of many mountain climbers for many decades.

Mount Everest is located on the border of Nepal and Tibet, China. Mount Everest is located in the Himalaya, the 1500 mile (2414 kilometer) long mountain system that was formed when the Indo-Australian plate crashed into the Eurasian plate. The Himalaya rose in response to the subduction of the Indo-Australian plate under the Eurasian plate. The Himalaya continue to rise a few centimeters each year as the Indo-Australian plate continues moving northward into and under the Eurasian plate.

Indian surveyor Radhanath Sikdar, part of the the British-led Survey of India, determined in 1852 that Mount Everest was the tallest mountain in the world and established an initial elevation of 29,000 feet. Mount Everest was known as Peak XV by the British until it was given its current English name of Mount Everest in 1865. The mountain was named after Sir George Everest, who served as the Surveyor General of India from 1830 to 1843.

Local names for Mount Everest include Chomolungma in Tibetan (which means "Goddess mother of the world") and Sagarmatha in Sanskrit (which means "Ocean mother.")

The peak of Mount Everest has three somewhat flat sides; it is said to be shaped like a three-sided pyramid. Glaciers and ice cover the sides of the mountain. In July, temperatures can get as high as nearly zero degrees Fahrenheit (about -18 Celsius). In January, temperatures drop to as low as -76°F (-60°C).

Source : http://geography.about.com/od/specificplacesofinterest/a/mounteverest.htm

Money - The transformation

Barter
    The first people didn't buy goods from other people with money. They used barter. Barter is the exchange of personal possessions of value for other goods that you want. This kind of exchange started at the beginning of humankind and is still used today. From 9,000-6,000 B.C., livestock was often used as a unit of exchange. Later, as agriculture developed, people used crops for barter. For example, I could ask another farmer to trade a pound of apples for a pound of bananas.
 

Shells
    At about 1200 B.C. in China, cowry shells became the first medium of exchange, or money. The cowry has served as money throughout history even to the middle of this century. 

First Metal Money
    China, in 1,000 B.C., produced mock cowry shells at the end of the Stone Age. They can be thought of as the original development of metal currency. In addition, tools made of metal, like knives and spades, were also used in China as money.  From these models, we developed today's round coins that we use daily. The Chinese coins were usually made out of base metals which had holes in them so that you could put the coins together to make a chain.

Silver
    At about 500 B.C., pieces of silver were the earliest coins.   Eventually in time they took the appearance of today and were imprinted with numerous gods and emperors to mark their value. These coins were first shown in Lydia, or Turkey, during this time, but the methods were used over and over again, and further improved upon by the Greek, Persian, Macedonian, and Roman empires. Not like Chinese coins, which relied on base metals, these new coins were composed from scarce metals such as bronze, gold, and silver, which had a lot of intrinsic value.

Leather Currency
    In 118 B.C., banknotes in the form of leather money were used in China. One-foot square pieces of white deerskin edged in vivid colors were exchanged for goods. This is believed to be the beginning of a kind of paper money.

Noses
    During the ninth century A.D., the Danes in Ireland had an expression "To pay through the nose." It comes from the practice of cutting the noses of those who were careless in paying the Danish poll tax.

Paper Currency
    From the ninth century to the fifteenth century A.D., in China, the first actual paper currency was used as money. Through this period the amount of currency skyrocketed causing severe inflation. Unfortunately, in 1455 the use of the currency vanished from China. European civilization still would not have paper currency for many years.

Potlach
    In 1500, North American Indians engaged in potlach, a term that describes the exchange of gifts at banquets, dances, and various rituals. Since the trading of gifts was so important in figuring the leaders’ community status, potlach went out of control as the gifts became more extravagant in an effort to surpass others' gifts.

Wampum
    In 1535, though likely well before this earliest recorded date, strings of beads made from clam shells, called wampum, are used by North American Indians as money. Wampum means white, the color of the clam shells and the beads.

Gold Standard
    In 1816, England made gold a benchmark of value. This meant that the value of currency was pegged to a certain number of ounces of gold. This would help to prevent inflation of currency. The U.S. went on the gold standard in 1900.

Depression
    Because of the depression of the 1930's, the U.S. began a world wide movement to end tying currency to gold. Today, few nations tie the value of their currency to the price of gold. Other government and financial institutions now try to control inflation.

Today 
   Electronic money (or digital cash) is already being exchanged over the Internet.

Source : http://library.thinkquest.org/28718/history.html