By Vipin Agnihotri
It has come into the notice of The India Street that Wipro, the Bangalore headquartered soaps to software company is working overtime to globalize its business and become yet another Indian MNC. Now that Azim Premji has laid a seemingly solid foundation for his $4 billion business, the 62 year old has the responsibility of ensuring that Wipro can metamorphose into a competitive global company.
In my opinion, Wipro has all the right bits in place. In fact, Wipro has purchased 11 companies over the last two years that have boosted its profile in the global IT space. In addition, Premji also entered the domestic business early and has jump-started his two non-IT businesses with big-ticket acquisitions.
No one will argue that Wipro Technologies is well positioned to snap up big IT outsourcing contracts especially after clinching the New Jersey based Infocrossing in a $ 600 million deal. If experts are to be believed, Wipro need to ramp up their key high-value segments such as consulting and BPO business.
Apart from that, third rank of Wipro in the Indian IT industry is in real danger from smaller rivals such as Cognizant Technology Solutions. Both TCS and Infosys Technologies are also trying to build on their existing leads. The good news for Premji is that mostly ignored domestic market has started to pick up momentum and Wipro can hope to net a cool $ 1 billion in business from this stream this year.
Point to be noted here is that Wipro Customer Care and Lighting has only just made its presence felt in the Asia Pacific region. While Premji has firmly said in media that both Consumer Care and Infrastructure Engineering are prominent parts of his business, he may want to rethink this strategy as these businesses start to scale up and it begins to make sense to spin them off into separate companies.
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