The long pending leadership issue which was nagging Wipro since the departure of Vivek Paul got sorted out toward the beginning of FY 08. Joint CEOs Suresh Vaswani and Girish Paranjpe were appointed, with a very clear-cut division of work.

While both have been entrusted with overall responsibility for strategy and operations of Wipros IT business, Girish Paranjpes direct responsibilities include the finance solutions, communications, media and technology verticals, and e-enabling the service line. He will also be driving consulting, besides looking after global delivery, CIO office and operations functions.

Suresh Vaswani, who was the face of Wipro Infotech for all these years, has been given charge of enterprise solutions; global IT service lines which include package implementation services, technology infrastructure services, testing services and ES-enabling; and Wipro BPO. Wipro Infotech will continue to be looked after by him though a separate CEO position has been created for this business in Anand Shankaran. Suresh Vaswani will also be directly responsible for sales, marketing, quality and strategic alliances across the IT business.

Azim Premji termed this as the best way forward to leverage the depth of our leadership and maximize the opportunities ahead of us but there seems to be confusion in the minds of customers which Wipro will have to constantly work at addressing.

Vivek Paul was a maverick. Only time will tell whether the two joint CEOs would be able to match his ways. There are also apprehensions about if the company can run smoothly with two CEOs, even though they have clearly divided functional areas. It is also not clear whether Premji will still be active on corporate matters.

Other changes that were made included appointment of a new BPO head in Ashutosh Vaidya in place of TK Kurian who became the head of Wipros consulting business. Ashutosh Vaidyas appointment has also come as a surprise. A 10-year Wipro veteran, he was the face of Wipros personal computing division and helped establish Wipros PC brands in India. During the period of transition, he will work with TK Kurian.

This appears to be a wise move, considering his no nonsense attitude and the way he helped complete the Wipro-ization of Spectramindfrom a pure call center to an integrated business with Wipros IT. Wipros consulting practice traditionally has been domain specific where a group of consultants manage certain verticals.

In light of all this restructuring what happens to old timers like Sudip Banerjee who is said to be moving to PremjiInvest, a private equity fund from Wipro? The move is seen more as rehabilitation. Two exiting Wipro senior management members were Ramesh Emani, and PR Chandrasekar.

Mega Strategies
Wipros MEGA/GAMA strategy started paying off reasonably well during the last year with some wins in excess of $50 mn, unlike any in the previous year. Wipro also established its large deals program through which it won some big deals as well as some large customers. Another strategic decision taken during the last financial year was an increased effort to tap the Middle East and Indian market. An important part of Wipros strategy was to venture into the total outsourcing market, in India as well as globally. The company struck two major total outsourcing deals during this period. Chennai-based cellular service provider, Aircels decision to outsource its IT management to Wipro was one of them. As part of the deal, Wipro will work toward aligning Aircels business with IT apart from deploying service delivery platforms which will allow them to launch WiMax, Mobile TV, and 3G services.

BFSI continued to be the largest vertical for Wipro followed by manufacturing and telecom. Retail, FMCG, and consumer durable are also emerging as important revenue generators. Wipro restructured its consultancy business and brought various consultancy practices under one umbrellaWipro Consulting Services. With the expansion of its global footprint, Wipro decided to start local delivery centers in Atlanta and Troy (US), Moterrey (Mexico), Cebu (Philippines), and Wroclaw (Poland). The BPO business continued to show consistent growth clocking revenue of Rs 820 crore.

There was some talk of Wipros Quantech acquisition not delivering on expected lines. But, according to a Wipro spokesperson, the Quantech acquisition has started to show results, albeit slow. Technically speaking this was Wipros entry into a new segment of the businessengineering design services. It managed to expand its ongoing relationship with an automotive customer. This business, according to a company spokesperson, grew higher than Wipros overall business during the last financial year.

Despite becoming a force to reckon with in the domestic space, particularly with regards to services, it remains a mystery why Wipro could not create a place for itself in the product spacelike Infosys, which boasts of its flagship Finacle core banking solution. Wipro has treaded its path cautiously on productizing on vertical specific solutions. The official line is that it is a conscious decision considering that the product business model is different from the service model. There is also a feeling among the top management that these two do not complement each other.

One important achievement for Wipro on the domestic front was its emergence as the largest SAP implementation partner in the country with more than ninety such projects underway in different stages. The slowdown has resulted in a sense of cautious approach from customers, but Wipro management considers this to be a temporary phase which will get over soon. The phase of consolidation in the global telecom equipment market had some impact on Wipros technology business, while it continued to do good on the service provider part.

In Infocrossing, Wipro managed to create a reputation for itself in terms of being probably the first Indian company to have world-class hosting capability, which the company considers a game-changing initiative. Infocrossing managed to get contracts from new customers to the tune of $38 mn in Q4 FY 08. The integration with Wipro went off well despite it being a fairly large acquisition.

Wipros hiring spree continued 14,000 new people will be joining the company this year. Attrition levels continue to hover around 2-3%. The company is looking at a mix of 70:30 for lateral versus campus hires. An interesting part of Wipros HR strategy is to hire non-engineering graduates, which would be around 3,500.

Sudesh Prasad
sudeshp@cybermedia.co.in

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