Seemingly unfazed by American outcry on outsourcing to low-cost destinations like India and the possible implications of the recent cut in number of H-1B visas, Wipro Chairman Azim Premji aims to turn his company into one of the Top 10 IT service companies in the world.
Undeterred by the developments in the US, Premji is firm on not scaling down his plans and told the US-based weekly BusinessWeek, "I want Wipro to play a big role in global IT services arena."
BusinessWeek said Premji's goal was to turn Wipro into one of the global top 10 IT services companies.
Tracing out Wipro's transformation from cooking oil company to an Indian IT giant with 23,000 employees and $902 million in revenues for fiscal ended March, 2003, it says Wipro is on the prowl for acquisitions in lucrative tech consulting to enable it to take on companies like IBM and Accenture.
Last November, Wipro became the first Indian IT company to make a major US acquisition by buying the energy practice of Boston-based tech consultant American Management Systems Inc. for $24 million, and in May 2003 it bought NerveWire Inc, a financial consultant in US for $19 million, the magazine said.
It quoted Oracle CEO Larry Ellison as saying that Indian companies were getting involved in big deals creating huge pricing pressure.
He was referring to a deal in which Oracle lost out to Wipro in providing tech services to Scandinavian telecom firm TeliaSonera.
Terming acquisition strategy as risky, BusinessWeek said Wipro's acquisition of NerveWire and AMS Energy Unit had already cut operating margins to about 24 per cent from 30 per cent in the past year, "taking some of the sheen off Wipro's stock price."
Premji, however, is unperturbed by the stock price movements of Wipro.
"The company is run to deliver its long term and short term goals not with any view on the stock price," the magazine said quoting Premji, who owns 84 per cent of Wipro and whose net worth is pegged at $5.3 billion.
Wipro, meanwhile, is expanding its business ambit from software coding and system maintenance to more ambitious areas like high-end research and helping customers design IT systems.
As a result of this, consulting today represents 7 per cent of its revenues from zero two years ago.
It also touches upon the speculation over Premji's successor at Wipro, saying although Premji has not immediate plans to retire, and he has a succession plan in place.
He would not, however, say whether his successor would be one of his two sons (both of whom are still studying) or Vivek Paul, the CEO of Wipro, writes BusinessWeek.
And Premji's comment on succession is merely that "Wipro has always been run by ablest hands and parental lineage has never been a discriminating factor for or against anyone."
Rivals admit Premji had always been able to attract quality professionals because of his own reputation for integrity and hard work and the fact that he gives his managers a free hand.
Even arch business rival, Infosys Chairman N R Narayana Murthy says: "Wipro is a good competitor and full of decent people and I would give Azim Premji the credit for the company's value system."
Former GE CEO Jack Welch who has worked with Premji as a partner and customer, has a good word for the 57-year-old Wipro chairman. "He does business eyeball to eyeball," says Welch.
Reciprocating the views, Premji says he has learnt to respect the competition.
"You have to build some paranoia into your system," he says.
