It is a balmy evening at the Karnataka Golf Association (KGA) course. Ever since the airport was relocated to Devanahalli on the outskirts of Bangalore, the traffic on the old “Airport Road” in the heart of the city has gone from chaotic to merely congested.
Self-effacing: Vaswani believes that his ‘blue-eyed boy of Premji’ tag is a media creation. Jayachandran / Mint
The KGA is one of the few lung spaces in a city that has grown too fast, with glass and chrome structures dotting its skyline. I am there to meet Suresh Vaswani, the joint chief executive officer of Wipro’s IT business, which brought in more than 80% of Wipro Ltd’s $5 billion revenue in 2008-09.
After heady growth, when the sector as a whole grew at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 28% over five years, the Indian IT sector is facing big challenges. In recent times, Vaswani and his co-CEO Girish Paranjape have had to navigate the spectre of slowing growth. Key markets such as the US and UK have been facing turbulence, clients have been playing hardball on pricing and margins have been under pressure.
Vaswani had suggested that we meet at the KGA instead of the Wipro headquarters at Sarjapur. Despite the traffic, he is on time and looks relaxed. The trademark French beard, which he sported for years, has disappeared; the clean-shaven Vaswani looks younger than his 49 years.
I later discover why he wanted to meet at the KGA: For the last six months, he has been spending time on the greens. “It was at the instance of my younger son that I picked up the game. Now I thoroughly enjoy it and try to spend as much time as possible, though my handicap is something I would discuss only a year later,” he laughs. He adds that the golf course is a great venue to bond with clients, “though I haven’t yet sealed any deals on it”.
We are seated at the club house, where Wipro’s chief marketing officer Jessie Paul joins us. We order some entrées while we talk.
Vaswani has always been seen as the blue-eyed boy of Azim H. Premji, the chairman of Wipro and its single largest shareholder. But more on that later.
After completing his engineering from IIT, Kharagpur, Vaswani joined SKF Bearings. “The learning there was good but I wanted to grow, so I joined the IIM after working for a couple of years at SKF.”
During the placement season at IIM, Ahmedabad in 1985, a not-so-well known company called Wipro came calling. Despite offers from a “couple of multinational companies”, Vaswani chose to join Wipro as “it sounded interesting and computers/IT was just taking off in the country”.
Twenty-four years on, he was named joint CEO of Wipro Technologies. From a rookie who pushed boxes (PC hardware) to heading the business is no mean feat.