India’s Wipro to invest $1 billion in cloud biz

As enterprises across the world move to digital and invest more in cloud and cybersecurity, Indian software majors are now ramping up their cloud portfolios. The latest is Wipro, which has unveiled a plan to invest $1 billion in cloud technologies over three years.

The Bangalore-headquartered company has now launched Wipro FullStride Cloud Services a platform that brings together its cloud-related capabilities and offerings to provide comprehensive cloud transformation services to its clients. Wipro has seen rapid growth in the cloud business and employs over 79,000 professionals and more than 10,000 people certified by leading cloud providers.

Wipro’s FullStride Cloud Services is a collaboration between its chief growth office and the existing global business lines and it will announce a new leader for this unit soon. Wipro Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director Thierry Delaporte said, “With our $1 billion investment in cloud capabilities, and the launch of Wipro FullStride Cloud Services, we are in a far stronger position to simplify, orchestrate and accelerate the cloud journey for our clients.”

In the last 12 months, Wipro has announced significant cloud-related wins with Telefónica Germany, Verifone, and E.ON in addition to Metro AG, one of the largest deals in Wipro’s history. The new unit intends to help clients attain greater business agility and become more competitive.

Increased hiring

Wipro had earlier said it would add over 12,000 campus hires this fiscal, 33% more than it did the previous year. In the June quarter, India’s fourth-largest IT services provider had a deal win of $715 million and its attrition increased to 15.5% in the first quarter of FY22, from 12% in the preceding quarter.

With demand outstripping supply, Wipro is looking to bridge the gap by hiring more entry-level personnel. Chief Human Resources Officer Saurabh Govil said, “We will be on-boarding 6,000 freshers in Q2, the highest Wipro has done, and will roll out 30,000 offers later this year for freshers to join in FY23.” Delaporte had earlier said that the company will ensure that talent supply is not a constraint to attain growth.

Robust numbers

In the recently concluded April-June quarter, Wipro reported a 35.65% year-on-year rise in consolidated profit after tax at 32.42 billion rupees, up from 23.90 billion rupees in the same quarter last fiscal. Sequentially, it was 9.09% higher from 29.72 billion rupees in the January-March quarter of FY21.

Wipro expects its revenue from the IT services business to be in the range of $2.53 billion to $2.58 billion in the July-September quarter, which translates to a sequential growth of 5-7%.