Wipro: Shifting Gears Makes All The Difference

From a vegetable oil and soap-maker company to an infotech giant, Wipro has turned around to emerge

as the second largest IT company in the country.

While services mark the bedrock of the company revenues, its

market capitalization recorded a peak of Rs69,528 crore on January 4. Though it could not hold on to this position for long,

with market sentiments pushing the scrip down, Wipro has achieved what no other Indian IT firm has been able to achieve. Further, if the 5-for-1 stock split is taken into account, Wipro is undoubtedly the highest-priced IT scrip. 

From a branded software products company to an end-to-end solutions

company, Wipro has come a long way. The man who transformed this company is none other than Dataquest’s ‘IT Man of the Year’, 1999, Azim Hasham

Premji. As part of restructuring its brand image, it came out with the vibrant Rainbow Flower, with a positioning statement ‘Applying Thought, day after day’, last year. After attaining the SEI-CMM Level 5, Wipro is targeting Six Sigma by 2002. 

However, Wipro has not hived off its software and services division into a

separate entity. It has always had a restructuring saga and in the last four years it has had close to five reorganizations. Professional managers manning the company have always been its policy makers and it has been no different throughout the period since its inception. With pressures mounting on Wipro, it has targeted the US market with an ADR issue and has also aimed acquisitions. Technically speaking, Wipro can still go for an ADR listing without hiving off its IT division. 

Domestic business has been its weakness and with the joint ventures falling through over the years, the PC market is the other gray area in the otherwise strong company. The new year will definitely see Wipro shifting its strategy to match global standards in the IT world. Well for achieving this, Wipro has certainly got to increase its workforce utilization and operating

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