Wipro confident of a sustainable performance in Q2: Neemuchwala
BENGALURU: Wipro Ltd’s chief executive officer (CEO) Abidali Neemuchwala believes that his year-long strategy is progressing well. Neemuchwala, the former TCS veteran, who joined the company in April 2015 as chief operating officer and took over as CEO in February last year, remains confident that by March 2018, the company will be able to match industry growth numbers. Edited excerpts from an interview: I personally believe that this quarter’s show in BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance), manufacturing and retail and energy is sustainable. Now I get the confidence from the six themes which I had first laid out. So, one of the pillars was client mining. We are seeing good traction.
Another theme is digital. Digital deals sizes are going up, and once you become a digital partner to a client, you can easily do the downstream activity. So, based on the visibility we have, and the way we have been making investments and working on our execution, I remain confident about having a sustainable performance from the second quarter onwards. I won’t call it a pain. We are in transition times. I have already outlined and shared in detail my six-pillar strategy. Now, we have said that we expect to be at industry growth rates by Q4 FY18. India restructuring should be done by Q1.
Now, when it comes to hiring, I have hired more people in the US than ever before. When I had not joined Wipro, we used to have 30% of our total workforce in the US as locals. By the end of first quarter, 50% of our workforce in the US will be locals.
Hiring in India may not be at the same as before. This is because of automation, and the way the business models are changing. So this inference of more pain for us is not a right observation.