Wipro investing heavily for next growth wave: Premji

"To prepare for the next wave of customers' spend, we are investing heavily in three key areas of analytics, mobility and cloud computing. We have created dedicated lines for the first two and a software layer for the third, with a focus on business process outsourcing (BPO) platform," Premji told reporters here.

With the global tech industry returning to the growth path, Wipro posted double digit growth in net profit and revenue in the Jan-March fourth quarter and fiscal 2010-11, but projected flat revenue growth from its global IT services for the April-June first quarter of fiscal 2011-12.

"As we look into the new fiscal, the demand environment seems to be more stable and predictable and discretionary spending, without question, has picked up," Premji pointed out.

Noting that IT budgets were realigning with businesses, influencing more spending, Premji said the turnaround augured well as it presented more opportunities for integrated offerings to customers.

Wipro's investment priority is in growth-oriented verticals like BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance), healthcare, energy & utilities and retail. In terms of emerging geographies, they will be in India, the Asia-Pacific region, Australia and Latin America.

"As we compete in an increasingly complex world, the macro-economics cycles are shorter, more volatile and less predictable. We experienced a paradigm shift for the first time when suddenly recession hit us in September 2008 and we were again caught aware when the environment improved very quickly in June 2009," Premji recalled.

Referring to the drastic organisational changes in the fourth quarter of last fiscal to make the global software major leaner, faster and agile for meeting customer requirements, the chairman said he was happy with the progress and the speed with which the changes were made so far.

"We believe we are better positioned with the changes we have made to meet the dynamic environmental needs and seek opportunities an ongoing basis. The journey has just begun because customers are not only investing in operational efficiencies, but also in revenue enhancement and new product introductions. Hence, our key strategic area of focus will continue to remain for tapping more business and resources," Premji added.

The $7-billion company has recast its six business units and six service lines in place. The sales revenue engine has been revved up with new talent and replenishment of some old talent. Superior satisfaction of employees through monitory and non-monitory interventions has been initiated.

Terming the April 1 acquisition of oil & gas business from the US-based Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) for $150 million as strategic to enhance its domain capability in the upstream area, Premjii said the all-cash deal would make the company a strong-end-to-end player in the space, which is getting enormous investments.

"The acquisition is complimentary to our skill sets and gives us access to some of the top customers in the space," Premji asserted.