WEF 2024: 'Saw an early green shoot in Q3 from order booking perspective,' says Wipro's Rishad Premji

Rishad Premji, Executive Chairman of Wipro Ltd, told Business Today on Thursday that the IT major saw "an early green shoot" in Q3FY24 from the order booking perspective.

At World Economic Forum (WEF) 2024 at Davos, Premji, while speaking to Siddharth Zarabi, Managing Editor, Business Today TV and Rahul Kanwal, Executive Director, Business Today, said he's feeling a "bit better" about the IT sector than he was feeling a couple of months ago.

"I'm feeling a little bit better about the sector than I was feeling two months ago. We've come in at the top end of our guidance last quarter and that's a reflection of just strong in-quarter execution, thanks to the momentum from customers. One of the early indicators I look at is just how discretionary spend, which is an important element in our industry, is shaping up. Our consulting business had a good quarter from an order booking perspective last quarter. So, to me that's an early green shoot and I want to underscore the word early green shoot as things sort of looking up compared to where where they were last year or last quarter and I'm hopeful as you get into the second half of this year that things hopefully will look better than they looked last year," he said.

Wipro reported better-than-expected revenue in the seasonally weak third quarter and highlighted early signs of a return to growth in client demand for its consulting services.

The company expects its March-quarter IT services revenue to range between $2.62 billion and $2.67 billion in constant currency terms. This follows a 1.7% sequential decline to $2.66 billion in October-December, marking the fourth straight quarter of falling revenue.

Premji also spoke about Wipro's employees returning to hybrid model of work.

"We've formally announced on November 15 that we want all of our employees to be coming back 3 days a week right so
we've moved to a hybrid model and it's mandatory to come back. I'm a big believer in connecting. we have about 65% of our people coming back in person and I find it is just changing the energy, the momentum, the conversation, the connectedness. I think things worked really well during Covid because people knew each other. There's lots of change in organisations, lots of growth in organisations our attrition rates were 25% in Covid they're 12% now, which means you had lots of people leaving. You've grown over 30% in these last 3 years in absolute terms, you've hired lots of new people and people don't know each other. So, connecting on a virtual medium for the first time, trying to build relationships I don't think is the easiest way to build relationships," he said.

Premji also weighed on the "70-hour workweek" comment by Infosys' Narayana Murthy, which became a talking point across the country.

"There's no question working hard matters and those that work harder on average win more than those that don't work harder. So, working hard is important. I don't have a view or number of hours but I certainly believe fundamentally that the intensity with which you approach something and those that work harder, I think, on average get ahead faster in life. You have got to ask the question what does work life balance mean. I remember distinctly a few years ago having this conversation with someone about pushing for work life balance and somebody said to me 'my concept of work life balance is not how many hours I work in the office, my concept of work life balance is don't take away my access to Instagram'. So, the concept of work life balance is also a different conversation than what you and I may think is the conversation on work life balance than just number of hours in the office," said Premji.

He said that the attrition levels in the IT industry are down "disruptively, dramatically".