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Business News/ Companies / Wipro revamps BFSI business leadership
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Wipro revamps BFSI business leadership

Wipro appoints Angan Arun Guha and Shailendra Singh in a bid to win more deals in the segment

Wipro’s troubles in the BFSI space are on account of the company being a late entrant in the space, and its inability to get outsourcing deals from some of the largest banks in the US. Photo: Hemant Mishra/MintPremium
Wipro’s troubles in the BFSI space are on account of the company being a late entrant in the space, and its inability to get outsourcing deals from some of the largest banks in the US. Photo: Hemant Mishra/Mint

Bengaluru: Wipro Ltd is looking to adopt a more country-focused approach in generating additional business from banking and financial services customers. India’s third-largest software services exporter has appointed two executives in pursuit of the objective.

The Bengaluru-based company appointed Angan Arun Guha to help it win more deals from banking and financial services customers in the US, Australia, West Asia and emerging markets, including India. Shailendra Singh will oversee the business in Europe and South Africa. Both appointments are effective 1 April.

Until now, the banking and financial services business was headed by Rajan Kohli, who was earlier this week tasked by CEO T.K. Kurien to head Wipro Digital, a newly formed business unit.

Both Guha and Singh will report to Shaji Farooq, the head of banking, financial services, and insurance business (BFSI), which accounts for 25% of Wipro’s total revenue.

Some experts, however, called these cosmetic changes and said Wipro should try to work on changing its underlining strategy.

“Appointment of new leaders is not the prescription. Wipro has not been able to turn the corner in insurance and it continues to lag in the banking and financial services. So it should rather focus on its sales engine, and more on what it has to offer rather than (make) these (changes)," said a Mumbai-based analyst with a foreign brokerage firm.

Wipro’s troubles in the BFSI space are on account of the company being a late entrant in the space, and its inability to get outsourcing deals from some of the largest banks in the US.

In absolute numbers, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) generates more than three times the revenue Wipro gets from financial services. In percentage terms, BFSI accounts for 44% of TCS’s revenues of 81,800 crore against 27% of Wipro’s IT services revenue of 41,000 crore for the year ended March 2014. BFSI at Infosys Ltd accounts for 32% of its total revenue.

To be sure, since Wipro hired Farooq from Infosys in 2012, the company has been trying to increase business from customers in the BFSI space. Last year, the company got a toehold in the US banking sector when it became an empanelled IT vendor with Bank of America Merrill Lynch, the second largest bank holding company in the US by assets.

For the last two years, it has also been trying to hard sell its data analytics capabilities, acquired through its engagement with data analytics start-up Opera Solutions, to customers in the capital markets space. Wipro has a minority stake in New Jersey-based Opera Solutions Llc.

A company spokesman confirmed the latest appointments at BFSI, which come a few weeks after Wipro undertook one of its largest management reshuffles in four years.

Wipro anointed former TCS veteran Abid Ali Neemuchwala as the first chief operating officer in six years, leaving Kurien with a fewer number of executives reporting to him.

Wipro also elevated two company veterans to the rank of presidents, and formed a panel of 12 executives to help Kurien roll out a road map for the company.

Shares of Wipro closed 3.45% lower at 612 apiece on BSE on Friday, while the 30-share benchmark index, S&P BSE Sensex, closed nearly unchanged at 27,458.64 points.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Varun Sood
Varun Sood is a business journalist writing on corporate affairs for the last fifteen years. He also writes a weekly newsletter, TWICH+ on the largest technology services companies. He is based in Bangalore. Varun's first book, Azim Premji: The Man Beyond the Billions, was brought out by HarperCollins in October 2020.
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Published: 28 Mar 2015, 12:07 AM IST
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