The Top 10: Rank 7: Wipro

Through
its two divisions, Wipro Technologies and Wipro Infotech, the company registered
a whooping 118.8 percent growth last fiscal on revenues from the communications
sphere on the previous year’s Rs 267.88 crore. While the Technologies Group
accounted for revenues worth Rs 458 crore coming from the sale of telecom
products, telecom solutions, and communication services and software put
together, the Computers & Systems Integration (C&SI) division of the
Infotech Group generated revenues of Rs 128.13 crore.

Wipro’s Technologies Group accounted for over 45 percent of
the total software service revenues, which was mostly in the telecom and
networking arena. One of the prime reasons for its growth is its positioning as
a global player. The Global R&D division under this group believes that it
is the consumer electronics wave now and what is significant is miniaturization,
less power, real-time environment, and small source codes. It has offshore
development centres comprising 150-odd people for companies like Cisco, Lucent,
Alcatel, Compaq, NCR, and Sequent. While these six major clients constitute for
55-60 percent of its market, there are about another 15 clients with it like
Sun, 3Com, Intel, Mitsubishi, and Hitachi accounting for the rest 30-40 percent.
It has added about 10 more new clients. This division is estimated to grow by 60
percent in terms of revenues. The revenue figure from this activity is believed
to account for about 27 percent of the total software services.

On the integration side, it has envisioned the role of IP at
the core and the role of fibre optics, WDM, and other technologies in the
networks and has positioned itself accordingly. It has already engineered its
end-to-end deployment solutions around the two most important segments–enterprise
and service provider. In 1999-00, the company’s integration business grew by
54.2 percent over that of the previous year to Rs 128.13 crore. Another reason
for its success is that it is one of the very few which bid from the software
side. It is here that its strength as distributor gets complemented with the
software expertise and vice versa.

It went in for ISO 9000 certifications and got assessed for
SEI-CMM Level 4, Level 5 standards, and is headed to go in for six sigma TQM
level. In December, it got the ISO 9001 certification for the C&SI division
also. Only two companies, Wipro and Computer Factory, have gone in for the ISO
certification for design, implementation, and project management of IT Systems
Integration (SI) services. It plans to set up an ISP/network competency centre
soon.

About 86 percent of its total revenue came from three focused vertical areas–the
banking and finance (B&F); manufacturing; and the business segment of IT,
telecom, and ISP for integration purposes. The B&F segment contributed about
31 percent. Wipro gave a major thrust on the telecom/service providers’ market
last fiscal and it managed to contribute about 17 percent to the total. On the
domain knowledge front, Wipro’s proposition is to be at the core of the new
communications networks and in the last mile access infrastructure. Its
experience in the time-bound projects in newer technologies, partnerships with
technology and market leaders like Cisco, Sun, Lucent, CA, Intel, and Netscape,
and good project management skills all have catapulted it to its glory. And the
future position of the company will be at all parts of networking–WAN, MAN,
LAN, and PAN.