"We showed a lot of flexibility last year," Wipro vice-chairman Vivek Paul said at the year-end results conference in April. That meant, among other things, that Wipro Technologies—the company’s global IT services division—let go if its R&D services revenues, which fell from 50% to 39%. This is the high-end, high-value business that the company, two years ago, had said would grow to 60% of total revenues.

At Wipro Tech, growth came from the enterprise solutions division. Financial services continued to grow, though that vertical is now beginning to slow down. Telecom, however, picked up through three straight quarters after a reasonably dismal FY ’02. And as at other IT services companies, US revenues went up here too, from 57% to 63%. Wipro is among the few top exporters that still gets a good 30% of its topline from the European market. Adding bottomline pressure, though, were higher onsite revenues and the impact of rupee depreciation, which is only expected to exacerbate this year.

At Wipro Infotech—the domestic, APAC and ME division—revenues were up 16%. Most segments saw growth—system sales were up 11% compared to a 24% fall last year, while the Sun server business grew 58%. Though the PC business fell overall because of Voyager being discontinued, Wipro SuperGenius sales grew 11% in value terms. Networking, peripherals and services were all up, though they remained below FY ’01 levels. Interestingly, while facilities management continued to grow at 33%, maintenance revenues went down for a third year in a row.

In many ways, it was a year of churn at Wipro. Even as Wipro Tech struggled with billing pressure, it went into investment overdrive with three key acquisitions, including Spectramind. Wipro Infotech has, however, increasingly looked like a stepchild over the years. Despite growth last fiscal, its share of the pie was down again, by three percentage points.