Brexit reflects an anti-globalisation trend says Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan

The UK's historic vote to leave the European Union last month sent shock waves around the world, rattled global markets and sparked a cacophony of opinions about its damaging impact on different sectors. While financial markets have mostly recoiled from the post-Brexit panic, the uncertainty over the Brexit effect still lingers.

While many UK-based technology companies and investors have spoken out on the negative impact on the global tech sector, both before and after the vote, other industry voices beyond the UK are now expressing their own concerns about the shocking decision and its potential consequences.

IBTimes UK had a chat with Kris Gopalakrishnan, one of the seven co-founders of global IT firm Infosys, at the Tech In Asia conference in Bangalore on 6 July.

Founded back in 1981, Infosys is known as one of India's most successful startups and its second largest software exporter with a chunk of its revenues flowing in from Europe. The former Infosys CEO says that although Brexit's impact is still uncertain, it is largely worrisome in terms of free movement of labour.

"The closing down of borders by countries like Britain and restricting free movement of labour is largely an anti-globalisation move," he says. "It's even more surprising that today developed countries are shutting down borders and restricting the economic movement whereas developing countries have opened up to the idea of free movement."

According to Gopalakrishnan, this trend "is a reversal of roles at this point, which may have an impact if the global economy slows down on overall economic growth around the world."

Similar sentiments have already been expressed by the UK tech community that largely did not want a Brexit vote in the first place, owing to a shortage of cyber skills domestically. They also feared that clients and foreign business in particular may have second thoughts on continuing their journey in the country due to uncertainty over future tariffs and taxes as well as the pound's plummeting value.

"The immediate concern is definitely about the currency fluctuation. But there is also the medium to long term impact for slowing down of business activity in Europe. And any kind of uncertainty is bad definitely for business," says Gopalakrishnan.

In fact, some reports have indicated that a lot of Asian companies like Samsung, Acer and even LG have been pondering the future of their operations in the UK post Brexit with speculation doing the rounds that Samsung could even move its Europe headquarters from London altogether.

Gopalakrishnan, however, thinks that as far as the Indian IT industry is concerned they will not be pulling back from the UK market as such.

"There is a difference between consumer facing business and B2B businesses. Indian IT companies are B2B businesses. So they get affected if their customers get affected. And for that we can only wait and watch what the effects will be," he says. "Having said that, most of these companies like other Asian companies also have hubs in other European countries so business in Europe for them will not be affected as such."

However, Gopalakrishnan, who is currently working with young entrepreneurs through his venture capital platform Axilor Ventures, is wary of investments being affected for start-ups and fresh funding as most investors did not predict a Brexit at all in the first place.

"Investors were caught on the wrong foot because even the day before the Brexit vote, everybody believed that Remain will win. And then in the morning, it was a shock to see that Brexit is leading," he says.