IT sector not looking at doomsday scenario: Wipro CEO Neemuchwala
NEW DELHI: Wipro chief executive officer Abidali Neemuchwala, who is based out of Dallas, US, could not fly down to Bengaluru when the company declared its second-quarter earnings last week because of a prior engagement.
However, in a telephone interview with Mint, Neemuchwala said that Wipro is well-positioned and on its way to make itself a future-ready firm.
The former Tata Consultancy Services Ltd veteran, who joined the company in April 2015 as the chief operating officer and took over as the CEO in February this year, has taken steps to improve Wipro’s delivery and sales capabilities. Due to slow growth and declining profitability, and the way technology is changing, many commentators and analysts have questioned the Indian IT outsourcing industry and are pronouncing the death of Indian IT. What are your thoughts? I would not agree with the death of Indian IT. Indian IT has always had the resilience or ability to transform itself. It has the flexibility, the nimble-footedness. One of our industry’s core competencies has been our ability to train a large number of people. Now is the market changing? The answer is definitely yes. So what has made us successful in the past—is that going to make us successful in the future? The answer is certainly no. Will change be required? The answer is yes. Will Wipro be able to undergo that change? Absolutely yes. This is because I have always believed Wipro as a company is entrepreneurial. We are also very technology-centric. We have made investments in digital technologies, like Internet of Things and cloud. We are making the organisation simple and nimblefooted. We started hyper automation and now we are ahead of our plan. It’s now been over eight months and two full quarters with you as CEO. What has been, say, two heartening features for you as the boss and issues which have disappointed you, which you believe could have made your company do better? Two most heartening things which I have seen in the eight months are that our strategy and ambition resonates and percolates to employees and customers. This is very important for any CEO. Simply, because no single CEO can do magic in a company unless the CEO has the power of the organisation. I am very glad that we have been able to do this and that is a very heartening thing for me. We had a very stable CEO transition (on 1 February Neemuchwala was appointed as CEO and his predecessor T.K. Kurien was appointed executive vice-chairman). We have a very stable top management team. The kind of changes we wanted to do at the top, we have been able to do without losing the senior leadership talent pool. The second thing is that as we started articulating our strategy, our customers are lapping up to this strategy. The newly-acquired and newly-built capabilities like Wipro Digital or Wipro Consulting or our hyper automation journey combined with Wipro Holmes, or our investments through Wipro ventures... we are able to take these capabilities to each one of our customers. Two full quarters as CEO, and you have embarked on a journey by articulating six broad themes. Given these measures you have started, the management has said in the past that a complete turnaround will take time. Will it be fair to ask if the company can come back or say end March 2018 with industrymatching growth or Nasscomprojected growth numbers? I’m always careful of putting a timeline and so I believe it is not unreasonable to expect this (by coming to industry-matching growth number by March 2018). I feel very confident and I see green shoots coming in a more sustainable manner. I’m very hopeful that four-five quarters is a good time for a very visible outcome or metric for an industry-leading growth or margin. One of the things which is of concern now for many is that despite making three buyouts, with a combined revenue of $340 million, in the last financial year, and this fourth buyout of Appirio, Wipro is not able to record impressive growth. So on the merger and acquisition (M&A) front, how are you going to make sure Wipro is able to integrate buyouts well and scale up business? I think there are two parts. First is having a bold and risk taking ability to buy. And second is staying the course and making these acquisitions successful.