Deal pipeline is bigger than ever before: Wipro CEO

Wipro's Paris-based CEO and managing director THIERRY DELAPORTE, who flew down to Bengaluru for the technology services firm's second quarter results for FY22, spoke to Neha Alawadhi, about the company's deal pipeline, the need to lower attrition, and how the firm plans to chart its growth path. Edited excerpts:

You hit the $10-billion annualised revenue run rate in Q2. How do you react and what’s the growth strategy from here?

We are progressing very steadily and quite in-line with the plan we had defined five quarters ago. We had laid out the strategy with a significant ambition, we defined the areas where we wanted to grow- focusing around our key clients, investing in the relationship, being bolder in terms of ambition, how can we contribute to our clients and not only as a provider but truly as a partner in their transformation. We had the ambition to invest into strategic areas around cloud, data, engineering services and security. What I like is that we've definitely executed on our plan pragmatically, but ruthlessly. And we've progressed, we have an obsessive focus on the market, and on growth. We've made some strategic acquisitions and they've started to produce results.

What’s the reason for the near 10 per cent drop in profit and what does the deal pipeline look like?

There's no drop in margin in this quarter versus the previous quarter. Last quarter, we had an 18.8 per cent operating margin and this was including exceptional items for about 100 basis points because of the two assets we had. So it was very clear that like-forlike the 18.8 per cent of last quarter would look like 17.8 per cent this quarter. So in fact, we are actually stable. Despite the acquisitions of Capco and Ampion, and a new cycle of salary increases that apply to 80 per cent of our organization, like-for-like, we have improved our margin over the previous quarter. The pipeline is bigger than it's ever been, in terms of both sectors and geographical spread. When I look at the pipeline-of about $27 billion—the pipeline is in cloud, security, engineering services, digital transformation.

Is growth going to be more inorganic focused?

We will maintain focus on organic growth, but we will also continue to do acquisitions. We have visibility on the second part of the year to assume that we will be able to show about 25 per cent growth year-on-year. We'll also continue to do acquisitions that support our strategy in terms of geographic and capability focus. We will probably continue to focus on small to medium size acquisitions. If there are opportunities of a big acquisition we will certainly not shy away from it.

What about the increase in attrition?

Attrition is higher than what I would like it to be. I take no comfort from the fact that this is not specific to Wipro, it's the same for our competitors and clients as well. We are obviously working on ways to reduce attrition, but are also prepared for the fact that it's going to take some more quarters before we materially reduce attrition. So we have to adapt our supply chain and hiring engine to support our growth.