Wipro CEO TK Kurien on future growth areas

Wipro CEO TK Kurien last week shared the company’s growth areas for 2014.

Wipro, the Bangalore-based IT services provider, posted a sequential revenue growth of 2.9 percent in reported currency and 2.3 percent in constant currency to $1.678 million. It was not the best in the Indian industry comparing with rivals such as TCS, Infosys, etc.

But the company is looking at improving performance. It will build more capabilities for adding clients in the digital space.

As far as Global Media and Telecom is concerned, Wipro continues to be optimistic and stay with similar run rates with the rest of the company.

The company is expecting U.S. recovery in the manufacturing space.

Wipro is building strategies to win more in the Healthcare and the Life Sciences space.

The company sees healthy pipeline of customers, especially in the U.S, who were previously bidding in challenged sectors, are more amenable to making discretionary investments.

“While clients are still in the process of finalizing their 2014 technology budgets, we expect budgets to remain stable or to increase, marginally. Within the technology spend, we see increase in the change-the-business budgets and pressure on the run-the-business budgets,” Kurien told analysts during a call.

Wipro says account management continues to be a key area of focus. Its top 5 customers grew 4.7 percent and the top 10 grew 3.8 percent, sequentially. Wipro saw good growth in Healthcare and Life Sciences, 7.6 percent; Financial Services, 3.1 percent; and Energy & Utilities, 4.8 percent in the third quarter of fiscal 2014.

Wipro CEO TK Kurien

IT services revenue from U.S. market grew at 3.2 percent and Europe at 5.4 percent. Wipro’s Global Infrastructure business grew 5.6 percent sequentially. Wipro expects Global Infrastructure business to grow faster than company average.

Wipro BPO business revenue grew 4.1 percent sequentially.

Product Engineering Services revenue grew 3 percent.

Wipro to shine

Wipro CEO TK Kurien says the company will focus on an evolved digital strategy to deliver better user interaction that has become increasingly critical for both acquiring and managing end-to-end customers.

“We are making investments in consulting platforms and intellectual property to better leverage our increasing capability in accounting customer experience, analytics and mobility. This approach has delivered design outcomes with 4 new accounts this quarter,” Kurien said.

Wipro sees customer demands for process simplification, standardization and automation. Its ServiceNXT platform addresses application management, infrastructure management, cloud and security operations in an integrated fashion. This is through a combination of machine learning and hyper automation. Last quarter, 2 customers signed up for this, and they’re seeing savings up to 40 percent beyond the labor arbitrage savings, Kurien said.

On M&A

“Our M&A program is pretty clear. There are 3 areas that we are looking at: One, is new capabilities; #2 is new geographies; and #3 would be new vertical areas. When 2 of out 3 can come together, then it makes sense for us to do it. If 2 out of 3 don’t come together, it just doesn’t make sense,” Kurien said.

Kurien said there is going to be pressure in terms of pricing and value clearly on the commoditized services.

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