IT major Infosys Technologies has valued its employees at a little more than Rs 57,000 crore (Rs 570 billion), up 23 per cent from the last year.

The company at the end of FY07 had close to 73,000 employees, a growth of 37 per cent over the previous year.

Even though the company had a net addition of close to 20,000 employees, the return on per employee basis has moved up to 6.7 per cent from the earlier 5.3 per cent. This reflects the sturdy systems and processes that the company has put in place to optimise better returns from their employees.

While the company paid out a total of a little over Rs 7,000 crore (Rs 70 billion) as salaries during the year, the ratio of employee cost to value of HR went up to 12.4 per cent from the earlier 10.3 per cent.

The human resources valuation has been carried out using the Lev and Schwartz model, based on the present value of the future earnings of employees.

It is also based on the following assumptions: employee compensation (all direct and indirect benefits earned both in India and abroad); incremental earnings (based on group and age) and future earnings have been discounted at the cost of the capital of 14.97 per cent, Infosys said in its annual report for 2006-07.

The brand value has reached Rs 31,617 crore (Rs 316.17 billion), up 38 per cent when compared with the value last year.

However, Infosys' brand value as a percentage of market capitalisation has witnessed a negligible decline. For 2006-07, it is 27.4 per cent as against 27.9 per cent the previous year.

The company has adopted the generic brand earnings multiple model to value the corporate brand. The methodology involved in determining brand profits from non-brand profits from the total profits restates the historical profits at the present-day values and adjusts for taxes.