Abid Neemuchwala banks on co overhaul, executional strategy

Even though a stupendous task is glaring at the Chief Executive Officer-designate of Wirpo, Abid Ali Neemuchwala, he is firm on relying on the core philosophy of the company and its efficient team strength backed by his executional strength.

In an interaction on Monday, Neemuchwala said Wipro is a technology company with a focus on intellectual property creation and value addition to its clients.

“We don’t want to carry forward the growth right now we are registering. We know that in the energy and utility space, we are bleeding. We have multiple levers in other vertical to ramp up our growth,” Neemuchwala said.

Neemuchwala said he thoroughly simplified the organisational structure for the past nine months after joining Wipro. “I do hope that these changes have really increased our velocity in our customer demand and employee response.  Organisationally we need to be nimble and operate fast,”he said.

He said organisations over a period of time builds a lot of complexity. “The new millennial workforce, we need to be nimble and operate fast,” he added.

Neemuchwala is also trying to make the company more competitive by improving the delivery side of the business and hiring more locals in Latin America, China and Canada.

After joining the company, he made each of Wipro’s six business unit heads responsible for the delivery of software in addition to managing sales. Neemuchwala finds that IT services business is going through dramatic changes and there is more importance to cloud, digital and security. Besides cross-selling services and arresting any fall in profitability as clients seek lower prices from software services firms, he said the company is looking at mergers and acquisitions as a main area to gain experience and complement on its inherent strengths.

He made a point that the company has reduced the technology transformation to two years from the earlier four years.

Neemuchwala is credited with having doubled the revenue of TCS’s back-office division in the six years he headed the business.

The new CEO will take over from incumbent T K Kurien from February. Kurien will become executive vice chairman, and will continue to report to Wipro Chairman Azim Premji. He will remain a board member until March 31, 2017.