How FCM’S Mitchell Habib helped Wipro bag its largest IT deal
NEW DELHI: An innocuous statement in a press release by Wipro Ltd sheds some light on how the Bengaluru-based company managed to win its largest information technology (IT) outsourcing contract, valued at $1.6 billion over 10 years from Alight Solutions LLC, the former benefits administration and human-resources outsourcing business of Aon Plc.
“FCM Consulting facilitated the transaction between the two organizations,” reads the last line of the press release dated July 20, shared after Wipro and Alight announced a long-term ‘strategic partnership’.
FCM Consulting is a privately held firm, which Mitchell Habib founded in 2014, after spending 25 years at General Electric Co., Citigroup Inc. and Nielsen Holdings Plc. FCM, like other advisory or sourcing firms like ISG or HFS Research, helps Fortune 500 companies select the right IT vendor to offer solutions to help companies run their business better.
Significantly, it underscores how relationships, like in any facet of life, work in IT outsourcing industry as Wipro’s chief executive officer Abidali Neemuchwala found a friend in an executive, with whom his friendship has only strengthened over the last decade.
During the last decade, while Habib was in charge of selecting the IT vendor, each of the three companies awarded mega (more than $1 billion in value) outsourcing IT work to Mumbai-based Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.
Understandably, Habib, who rarely engages with the media, said in an interview last year that he has done more business with Natarajan Chandrasekaran when he was CEO of TCS.
“Chandra and I have done more than $4 billion in business in over a decade we have known (each other),” Habib told this newspaper in January last year, a few days after Chandrasekaran was named chairman of Tata Sons Ltd.
Neemuchwala and Habib’s friendship started when TCS in 2008 won a $2.5 billion over nineand-a-half years from Citigroup. Then, Habib was chief information officer of Citigroup’s North American Consumer business while Neemuchwala was the head of back office services (BPS) business of TCS.