Infosys succeeds in demat drive

As part of its commitment to the highest levels of service to its investors, Infosys Technologies had embarked on a drive to get their shareholders to convert their holdings from a physical form to the dematerialisation (demat) form. This drive was undertaken as part of an investor relation program and covered nearly nine cities in India where the shareholder population was maximum. Mr. Nandan Nilekani, managing director of the company, stated that the company was committed to enhancing shareholder convenience and demat is an important medium in delivering this enhanced quality of shareholder servicing.

As part of the drive, senior Infosys executives personally met the investors and explained to them the advantages of holding their shares in the demat form. As a result of this drive, the coverage of the company's demat shares increased from 88.5 per cent to over 96 per cent in just three weeks of the drive. This has resulted in Infosys being the largest electronically held company in the country.

The advantage of high service levels in the demat form was clearly demonstrated when the company decided to split its shares of Rs. 10 each face value into two shares of Rs. 5 each face value. The company was able to credit the split shares to the investors within a day of the record date of 11 February 2000, thus enabling a majority of the investors to immediately trade the split shares in the shortest possible time. Simultaneously, the company's ADRs' were also credited on the first trading day after the record date.