13-09-2012, 01:07 PM
Wipro Limited
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History of Wipro Limited
Wipro is an integrated corporation that offers a diverse range of products, solutions and services in systems, software, consumer care, healthcare, lighting and infrastructure technology. We are driven by our passion for quality and our commitment to customers. This drive has catapulted us among the ten most admired companies in India. Through constant innovation and a people-first attitude, we strive to assume leadership positions in all our businesses in the new millennium.
The third-largest company in India, Bangalore-based Wipro Limited is an ever-growing and ever-diversifying global company that manufactures and sells products and services ranging from cooking oil and soaps to healthcare instruments and information technology (IT) consulting. Although Wipro's chairman and managing director Azim Hasham Premji is committed to the company's diversified business model, its future clearly lies in its continued successes in software and IT services, which make up nearly half of the company's sales and has consistently outpaced the growth of Wipro's other businesses. Wipro's world-class technologies division provides a range of high-tech services such as global IT consulting, e-business integration, and legacy systems maintenance to clients such as Cisco Systems, Thomas Cooke, and NEC. Wipro's IT efforts are so reliable that in 1998 the company became the first in the world to have been awarded the Software Engineering Institute's (SEI) coveted Level 5 Certification for quality. After an impressive debut on the New York Stock Exchange in 2000, Premji, who owns 75 percent of Wipro, became one of the top billionaires in the world.
Humble Beginnings: Mid-1940s to Early1970s
Western India Vegetable Products Ltd. (Wipro Limited) was founded in 1945 by M.H. Premji. The company sold vanaspati solidified sunflower oil to retailers, who sold it in bulk, scooping 50 and 100 grams for customers who brought along their own containers. In 1947 the same year that India gained independence from British rule, 32-year-old Premji laid the foundations of a vegetable oil mill at Amalner in Maharashtra. When Pakistan's prime minister offered him a position as finance minister, Premji turned it down, citing his loyalty to India and his fledgling cooking oil business. Little did either man know that later, in the new millennium, Wipro's value would dwarf Pakistan's gross domestic product. Wipro went public in 1947 for roughly $30,000.
Rapid Growth and Expansion in the 1990s
India's software industry continued to take off throughout the nineties, at a compounded annual rate of nearly 60 percent for most of the decade. India quickly became the third-largest supplier of IT labor, and its communications infrastructure rapidly improved. Part of this growth was driven by a growing number of U.S. corporations that began to tap into the cheap IT labor market in India, often for 40 percent to 60 percent less than the cost of U.S. labor. As a result, Wipro typically contracted out teams of engineers to work at U.S.-based companies. As successful as this model was, it could not be counted on to last, due to mounting competition and Wipro's growing need to offer more sophisticated technology solutions.
Wipro began to shift its IT business away from costly on-site development projects in the United States, to more profitable offshore development closer to home. To help keep its competitive edge, the company replicated the development labs of some of its major clients, including AT&T, IBM, and Intel Corporation. And while Wipro continued to offer a range of programming services, including hardware design, networking, and communications and operating system support—it continued to diversify into other lines of business.