Date:20/04/2006 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2006/04/20/stories/2006042004920400.htm

Back Wipro aggressive on global expansion

Our Bureau

Plans acquisitions to build domain expertise, consultancy skills

Bangalore , April 19

The Wipro Chairman, Mr Azim Premji, on Wednesday said that the company was open to more acquisitions and would pursue an aggressive strategy to enhance its global presence and expertise.

"Our approach toward acquisitions is not just to increase numbers. It is to build certain geographical footprint, particularly in Europe, where we think there is a huge potential for future growth," he told newspersons.

Wipro made three acquisitions in the last six months, including that of Austrian chip-design firm NewLogic for $56 million.

Mr Premji said: ""Through acquisition, Wipro is looking at building domain expertise to acquire intellectual property and patents and to basically strengthen our level of consultancy skills."

Stating that the acquisitions last fiscal were fairly widespread, especially in areas of technology infrastructure services, banking and product engineering, he said: "You will continue to see a mix of acquisitions as we go forward."

Focus on Europe

Further, Mr Premji said that Wipro saw great traction in Europe - especially Continental Europe - West Asia, and Japan. "Europe was doing a catch-up with global IT sourcing. Europe is a huge market and Japan is getting stronger. Our penetration in Europe is not as good as our peers and we see a significant potential there."

According to him, Wipro's new centre in Bucharest would start functioning by the end of next month.

More employees

Besides adding employees in different cities where it already has a presence, Wipro will seek to diversify to smaller cities where it would recruit aggressively.

However, the company has not disclosed its hiring plans for the year.

Besides the SEZ unit in Kolkata, a few other applications are pending with the Centre, Mr Premji said.

A decision on setting up these centres would be taken once the Government clears doubts on SEZs that are being tackled by a Group of Ministers headed by the Defence Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee.

Further, Mr Premji said, innovative initiatives accounted for five per cent of total revenues in 2005-06.

"Our objective is to take it to 10 per cent of our revenues in the next three years on the revised basis on what I see it will be in three years," he said, adding that the strength of innovation teams would be ramped up significantly in the current fiscal.