India not centre of world for Wipro: T K Kurien

BANGALORE: Wipro has had two successive quarters of good growth, suggesting that the $7-billion IT services company, which for over two years had underperformed the industry, is finally turning around. CEO T K Kurien talks to TOI about the elements contributing to the turnaround and about some fundamental changes happening within the company. 

You've had two quarters of good growth. What are the top reasons? 

We are executing better. We have done well in healthcare and life sciences; energy & utilities continues to grow. Three years ago, energy & utilities was $400 million, we will end this year at more than a $1 billion. We are the third largest player in energy & utilities after IBM and Accenture. The gap between them and us is just $1 billion. In one area called sub-surface, we are the leaders in the world. What we are doing in energy & utilities we are now doing in retail banking. We are picking up spots and saying that in this particular area we will be best in the world. But to be world-beaters, we have to culturally reorient ourselves. One of the things we have done is completely decentralize the way we run. We are telling business unit heads, you have a budget and you will be measured on four parameters — market share gain, topline, bottom line and customer satisfaction. If customer satisfaction drops, it's the end of your career. The other three parameters, as long as you are trending in the right direction, it's okay. My job is simple, I have to hold the business unit heads' feet to the fire. 

How do you pick the spots you want to excel in? 

Based on current customer base, based on where we see market discontinuities. You can never gain market share in an environment that is stable. It has to be a market discontinuity where competitors are so embedded to the past that they can't see the future. If you go to a customer with the future, you will be able to take the competitor out of the contract. 

With the fundamental changes in technology that are emerging, do you think the company will have to structurally change? 

We are in the midst of a huge trend change where customers increasingly don't want to buy their IT, they want it as a service. So we have to create a new business around this. At some point, the new business will become more important than the old business. But till then we will have to run both and we have to drive them independently. We can't do it in the same structure. Yet the old business has to access the new business, which means the cultural aspect of collaboration becomes important. 

What are the structures that will emerge? 

'As-a-service' may be a separate company. We haven't thought through that. Leadership will have to collaborate a lot more. Most large companies fail because of the egos of senior management. It's my shop, let me run it my way, don't interfere with it. You can't have that kind of mindset. So people now don't get rewarded only for performance; they get rewarded for values. It's a big change. 

You want to get to a sequential 4-4.5% growth. How? 

We have to gain share versus competition. We are clearly not there yet. Second, we have to get our cost structure such that we are so competitive that nobody can touch us - we have to do that with automation, simplification, reallocation of people. Third is post sales experiences. We are in a people's business. Our brand is dictated by the people we have. And those people have to be empowered, charged up in front of the customers. Having all these people in India doesn't make a difference. 

Is this why we see management commentary on ramping up onsite hiring? 

There is a different reason behind it. We are an Indian company in our mindset, yet our customers are global. So we have to globalize our management base. From this year on, every year we plan to recruit 100 kids from colleges in UK, US, Germany, France, the Nordics, South Africa. This Global 100 will be recruited after an intense psychometric process and their compensation will be the same wherever they are hired from. They will spend six months working in a village, then they will work in different functions. They will work a couple of years in India, a couple of years in some other country, then their home country. They will keep rotating, and when they do that, they become global citizens. They become citizens of Wipro and not citizens of a particular country. They will be able to connect and create linkages across the world. When they are in trouble for a particular thing, they can collaborate with each other. India is not the centre of the world for us. 

With this, you are also creating a leadership pool? 

Yes. Wipro of the future has to be different. We can't live with traditional management structures. About 37% of Wipro's population is women, but how many women do we have in senior management? About 88% of our business is outside of India, but how many senior people do you see of different nationalities? In a services company, culture is very important. So leadership has to come from within and we need to have a succession plan very early in the cycle. If you get someone from outside, they make the cardinal mistake of believing that what made them successful in the past will make them successful in the future. It doesn't work. 

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