Wipro clients positive despite setback for some

Bengaluru, Jan 20 : Software major Wipro's global clients were positive on demand for IT services in 2018 despite some customer specific uncertainty, said a top official on Friday.

"Calendar year 2018 commentary from our clients look positive while there are some customer specific uncertainties," Wipro Chief Executive Abidali Z. Neemuchwala told reporters here.

Admitting that performance in verticals like energy, natural resources and utilities were impacted by some customer specific issues, Neemuchwala said there was a rebound in the energy business.

"In the third quarter (Q3), we made our 13th strategic investment through Wipro Ventures in Headspin, which offers a mobile experience management platform. We had 20 joint wins with these portfolio firms in Q3 and 50+ joint wins in this fiscal," the CEO recalled.

The company is working on a retail banking modernisation programme with one of the world's largest banks, using Salesforce for customer experience across touch points and utilising insights to offer personalised services, products and pricing to 40,000 bankers.

"We have about 90,000 techies trained on digital skills" added Neemuchwala.

A global fashion retailer in Europe chose the outsourcing firm for a large scale programme to transform its buying and merchandising function and deliver digital and unified front-end functionality for store operations.

"We will provide a scalable and robust business processes and systems to enable single view of inventory, assortment; pricing optimisation, accurate demand forecasting and fuel expansion plans in 11 countries across Europe and the US," asserted the Chief Executive.

Through its Horizon programme, the company funded 2 new projects in the Integrated Threat Management and Cloud Security in the third quarter.

"We are working on 14 themes, including AI (Artificial Intelligence), autonomous vehicle, cybersecurity, industry 4.0, IoT (Internet on Things)," added Neemuchwala.