PaRCha - JNU - AISA material - 2007 ID-17526
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Products and consisted of buying groundnuts and selling them as oil and oil cake. The fortuitous exit from India of IBM a year later enabled Premji to diversify into an area he was more comfortable with -the manufacture and sale of minicomputers. The fledgling player soon decided that the company's strength lay in software and by 1999 Wipro became the first company in the world to achieve the top level (five) of the Capability Maturity Mode (CMM), the industry's most stringent certification. .
Gaining a foothold at the American end of business in the mid-1980s meant negotiating the chakravyuha or maze of Indian bureaucracy and foreign exchange regulations. Wipro pioneers such as Subroto Bagchi and Sridhar Mitta (both of whom have since moved on amicably to co-found their own companies) lived out of suitcases or used their bedrooms as offices to establish a foreign presence. .
Like the other two of the Indian IT Big Three, Wipro has made the most of the simple economics of cost arbitrage -the ability to carry out business processes in India at a third or a fifth of the cost of those in more developed economies. But it has also branched out on its own in at least two ways: First, it has always maintained a presence as an innovative company and computer/peripherals manufacturer for the indigenous market, even when such activities seemed to make little business sense. And second, it continues to retain its brand name in a wide array of consumer product areas, from toilet soap to cooking oil to light bulbs. .
Premji's own frugal habits -he flies by economy class and uses company guest houses rather than hotels -set the standards for a lean, mean operation in the company's formative years. However, the company has been a quick learner, especially when its foreign employees pointed out lacunae in its compensation and perks package. Today, Wipro no longer needs to pay the best wages to ensure talent. Its reputation for fostering an ego-free working environment where you can always knock on the boss' door if you have a bright idea bridges any small gap in pay packet expectations. Nevertheless there may be challenges as a telling quip that Hamm recalls from a former Wipro executive reveals: "They don't know how to have fun." .
The presence in Bangalore of a large number of American IT companies has brought with it a sharp change in the workplace environment -where coffee and soft drinks dispensers and exercise machines are as much a part of the scene as bean bags and casual dressing. Wipro and other Indian players have had to make subtle changes in their psyche to ensure that they retain the loyalty of their core staff in an industry where, as branding expert Harish Bijoor famously put it, call centre employees would "change jobs for a better samosa". .
The book is peppered with insights like this that ensure that it rises above an awed `gee whiz' success story. In another revealing instance, Hamm reports that Wipro decided in 2006 to spend $3 million on an in-house chip-testing facility -something that is normally done only by large semiconductor manufacturers. The design of chips may be just one arrow in Wipro's quiver of IT services -but by having its own captive test house, it was able to knock two months off the development process. It seems to be betting on this .
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PaRCha - JNU - AISA material - 2007 ID-17526
.
Products and consisted of buying groundnuts and selling them as oil and oil cake. The fortuitous exit from India of IBM a year later enabled Premji to diversify into an area he was more comfortable with -the manufacture and sale of minicomputers. The fledgling player soon decided that the company's strength lay in software and by 1999 Wipro became the first company in the world to achieve the top level (five) of the Capability Maturity Mode (CMM), the industry's most stringent certification. .
Gaining a foothold at the American end of business in the mid-1980s meant negotiating the chakravyuha or maze of Indian bureaucracy and foreign exchange regulations. Wipro pioneers such as Subroto Bagchi and Sridhar Mitta (both of whom have since moved on amicably to co-found their own companies) lived out of suitcases or used their bedrooms as offices to establish a foreign presence. .
Like the other two of the Indian IT Big Three, Wipro has made the most of the simple economics of cost arbitrage -the ability to carry out business processes in India at a third or a fifth of the cost of those in more developed economies. But it has also branched out on its own in at least two ways: First, it has always maintained a presence as an innovative company and computer/peripherals manufacturer for the indigenous market, even when such activities seemed to make little business sense. And second, it continues to retain its brand name in a wide array of consumer product areas, from toilet soap to cooking oil to light bulbs. .
Premji's own frugal habits -he flies by economy class and uses company guest houses rather than hotels -set the standards for a lean, mean operation in the company's formative years. However, the company has been a quick learner, especially when its foreign employees pointed out lacunae in its compensation and perks package. Today, Wipro no longer needs to pay the best wages to ensure talent. Its reputation for fostering an ego-free working environment where you can always knock on the boss' door if you have a bright idea bridges any small gap in pay packet expectations. Nevertheless there may be challenges as a telling quip that Hamm recalls from a former Wipro executive reveals: "They don't know how to have fun." .
The presence in Bangalore of a large number of American IT companies has brought with it a sharp change in the workplace environment -where coffee and soft drinks dispensers and exercise machines are as much a part of the scene as bean bags and casual dressing. Wipro and other Indian players have had to make subtle changes in their psyche to ensure that they retain the loyalty of their core staff in an industry where, as branding expert Harish Bijoor famously put it, call centre employees would "change jobs for a better samosa". .
The book is peppered with insights like this that ensure that it rises above an awed `gee whiz' success story. In another revealing instance, Hamm reports that Wipro decided in 2006 to spend $3 million on an in-house chip-testing facility -something that is normally done only by large semiconductor manufacturers. The design of chips may be just one arrow in Wipro's quiver of IT services -but by having its own captive test house, it was able to knock two months off the development process. It seems to be betting on this .
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