Increasing Reach

Wipro's telecom division recorded a turnover of Rs 5,585 crore in the last financial year as compared to Rs 3,471 in fiscal 2006-07, a growth of 60.9%. The revenue from network integration grew from Rs 1,028 crore in 2006-07 to Rs 1,517 crore in 2007-08. The telecom software revenue stands at Rs 3,208 crore, which includes revenues from SI, software products, and embedded telecom software.

In 2006-07, Wipro had realigned its telecom business units to combine product engineering solutions and telecom service providers to form a separate vertical. It seems Wipro is still struggling to find the right arrangement. Once again in 2007-08, the company realigned its verticals and horizontals. Wipro has integrated telecom and product engineering with media business units to form a new business unit that will address communication service providers, media and entertainment, and technology service providers.

Among major deals won by the company was a large transformational outsourcing deal with Aircel, greenfield implementation for a leading service provider in the Middle East, two major deals in SDP and value added services space, and carrier Ethernet network project for a leading telecom service provider in India. Wipro also won a Rs 200 crore, five-year contract from Eihad Atheeb Telecommunications Company in Saudi Arabia. The scope of the contract includes provisioning and management of a comprehensive suite of OSS/BSS telecom solutions.

Wipro 5

In response to the increasing contribution of the Apac region to its revenues, Wipro would be focusing more on that market and the Middle East. However, Europe and the US will continue to be major contributors to its engineering business revenue. In Europe, Wipro will continue to focus on building leadership. The company is targeting revenues of Rs 4,000 crore from the European region in the next one year.

Wipro made key strategic tie-ups and acquisitions to boost its business. The company increased its footprint in Europe by forming an alliance with Nokia Siemens Networks. Under the agreement all radio access R&D activities currently performed in Berlin will be provided to NSN by Wipro.

Wipro has developed alliances with key partners like Oracle, HP, Cisco, and Amdocs to deliver comprehensive products and service-support portfolios.

Being the largest independent R&D services provider in the world, Wipro is likely to play a major role in new product engineering. Till now this capability has been largely servicing the needs of the technology vertical.

Going forward, it will act as a service line and will address the embedded, real-time, VLSI, and system software needs of business units like manufacturing, healthcare, energy and utilities, and retail, transportation, and services in addition to the needs of the communication, media, and technology verticals.

We have realigned our verticals and horizontals to serve our customers better

VP, Media and Communication Service Provider Vertical, wipro

Suryanarayan Valluri

Address: Wipro Technologies, Doddakanneli, Sarjapur Road, Bangalore-560035
Tel: +91-80-28440011
Fax: +91-80-28440256
Website: www.wipro.com

Highlights

Realigned new verticals and horizontals
Major traction from the Apac region this year
Invested heavily in building innovation labs focusing on convergent technologies
Network integration becomes the key focus in the Indian market

How would you rate your performance in 2007-08?
Our telecom service provider segment has grown significantly and we have seen major attractions from Apac this year. Our European business has also grown on all service lines and we have built leadership in key geographies.

In the mobile devices segment, we have helped some of the top OEMs realize complex feature phones with highly evolved multimedia functionality through our software integration service and have helped them launch differentiated and high revenue generating mobile devices, applications, and services.

In the semiconductor space, we helped our customers make timely releases of their platforms to the OEM, thus, optimizing the platform for better power utilization and improved software stability.

What were your developments in the equipment vendor space?
In the equipment vendor space, we have grown in all the top 10 TEMs as compared to last year. We are responsible for total engineering of some of their products including small sample manufacturing. We have also tied up with EMSes and ODMs to deliver white label products.

What is the way forward for Wipro in 2008-09?
Wipro is uniquely positioned as a partner, vendor, and consultant to provide customers a convergent view of these industries and �enable service ubiquity�. Our offerings range from network engineering services to IT and operations that help in addressing this transformation of processes, systems, and networks; and provide end-to-end solutions.

After studying the industry dynamics we have realigned our verticals and horizontals to serve our customers better. We have integrated our telecom and product engineering with media business units to form a new business unit that addresses communication service providers, media and entertainment, and technology service providers.

This business unit today serves ten of the top fifteen communication service providers and all tier-1 equipment manufacturers. We are also working with seven out of the top ten mobile terminal vendors and fifteen of the top twenty semiconductor firms. Further, we are associated with six of the top ten mobile chipset vendors and twelve of the world's top fifteen high-tech firms and leading media providers.

What will be the most exciting thing in the Indian telecom market that will benefit the growth of Wipro's telecom vertical?
The market value of Indian wireless service providers is already sky-high and with spectrum constraints, M&A activity is on the rise. We see players like Verizon and AT&T trying to enter into India soon. This M&A activity and entry of new operators provides significant opportunities for Wipro.

Wipro will bring its global system integration expertise coupled with two decades of R&D experience in the telecom domain and vendor neutral approach to help telecom operators in their transformation journey. We will also support carriers' move to content services by offering modular, flexible, and open solutions.

Though Wipro is not in the products business, we foresee equipment vendors engineering special products to address this demand.