The role of a CEO at Wipro is a very challenging task especially at a time when company is not firing on all cylinders coupled with a downcast economic environment. TK Kurien, CEO of the company?s IT business, has undertaken the task of restructuring and re-energising the company. He says the final destination will be when its profitability and revenues are higher than industry growth, in an exclusive luncheon interview with FE?s Debojyoti Ghosh & PP Thimmaya.
How would you measure the progress Wipro has made in the last 18 months?
I am not kind of jumping around in joy; there is plenty of work to do. One end of the market is extremely commoditised and existing players go into realm of denial. The biggest game is how we can create value in the market place. In the entire stack of technology services, we have to move to the top end where we are interfacing directly with the customers. For years we have been traditionally selling to the customers who are service provider to the customer service producer. We are now increasing our calling beyond the CIO, CFO, marketing head, HR head etc. We are trying to create a solution architecture which will bring all the technology pieces together.
What will play a key role in delivering such solutions?
Intellectual property (IP) is becoming a big game. We have to create solutions which will accelerate the delivery. We got 2-3 big wins recently and IP will be core to Wipro. This should also help us getting good pricing from the customers. Though for now, Wipro has been using IP on the delivery side and we will deploy it for our customers in the next six months. It will be a journey which will be very different from what we are used to till now.
What have been the early dividends from the new initiatives?
We have definitely moved our meters on many things like customer satisfaction, operational efficiencies and deal conversion. It is still a work in progress as the change in market is so massive and we will have not delivered the goods unless we are able to execute. However, there is a war of talent out there as we are taking about value addition and the kind of people we are require are very different. Overall, I do not think we are there yet as we are not a technology company but an outsourcing company. The tipping point will be when our growth rate and profitability is much higher than that of the market that is when we can say that we have reached our destination. There are certain intermediate milestones to achieve and it is process we are working on right now.
Are there any role models for Wipro?
The existing role models for us would be companies like Apple and Google as they directly interface with customers. Many of the India centric IT companies have missed the trick and the real change would one happen on what we place our bets on.
How do you see the external economic environment now?
The environment has not changed, but there are early signs of revival. Though we are not completely sure whether it will be a secular trend. We are focusing on creating scale in the business, where we could go out there and hunt for business. Our ambition is to create a great sales engine. The strategy has been articulated and now it is only a matter of execution.
