The son rises, but Wipro sees slow growth

Wipro Ltd, India's third largest IT exporter, declared its fourth quarter and full year FY15 numbers. Total revenue at $7.5 billion has grown by 8 per cent compared to the previous year, considerably lower than industry average and that of its larger peer TCS, which already has declared its numbers.

It has been no secret that Wipro has been in a slow growth mode for the past few years and attempts by the management to put it on a higher growth path has been yielding results at a sluggish pace. In the fourth quarter of FY 15, topline growth was slower than anticipated though profits grew as per market estimates. With a bigger presence in the energy segment than its peers, Wipro has been impacted due to its customers getting affected because of low prices of oil and gas globally.

T.K. Kurien Chief Executive Officer of Wipro, declared, "We continue to execute on our strategy and have achieved improved customer satisfaction through better articulated solutions and improved delivery. We are well positioned to take advantage of the opportunities in the market, while tackling headwinds in certain areas. We see Digital, Open Source and Artificial Intelligence as key levers for driving business change and reshaping the delivery model for the future."

This quarter was also notable for a few other things. As widely anticipated, Rishad Premji has been promoted to the board of the company to represent 'shareholder interests', as Kurien delicately noted. Ever since joining the company in 2007, Rishad has been slowly groomed with increasing responsibilities. Apart from being on the board, Rishad will continue to run strategy, M&A, investor & government relations as well as Wipro Ventures.

The induction of TCS veteran Abid Ali Neemuchwala as Group COO means that Kurien can focus on next-gen strategy much more aggressively as the COO would focus on day to day operations. Also new CFO Jatin Dalal showed that he was a perfect replacement for Suresh Senapaty, the long-time CFO of the company who retired last quarter. Markets will be hoping that new faces and the new found energy would mean that the pace of change and growth would accelerate.