Bangalore: Wipro Ltd has won a multi-year, $600-million (Rs2,358 crore) deal to manage Aircel Ltd’s IT infrastructure, making the software company the first local vendor to win such a deal from a telco.

Bharti Airtel Ltd, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Idea Cellular Ltd, and Vodafone Essar Ltd have struck similar deals with the local arm of International Business Machines Corp., the most recent being a five-year, $600-million Vodafone contract in December.

The latest deal will be implemented by Wipro’s division, Wipro Infotech. According to Rohit Chandra, executive director of Aircel, IBM and Hewlett-Packard Co. were also in the running for the contract. Such deals usually require the IT company to take over the existing IT infrastructure and resources of the customer, and Wipro will take on its rolls 100 employees of Aircel, said Anil Jain, vice-president, corporate business unit, Wipro Ltd. The company expects to have a team of about 400 people working on the Aircel project over the next 12-24 months.

Wipro will help Aircel deploy applications such as retail billing and revenue assurance and integrate and manage them, according to Chandra.