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Wipro Technologies (NYSE: WIT) is an information technology service company established in India in 1980.

History

Wipro began in 1947, as a vegetable oil company from an old mill founded by Azim Premji's father. When he died in 1966, Azim, a graduate in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, took on the leadership of the company at the age 21. He repositioned it and created (Western India Vegetable Products Ltd) Wipro Ltd in 1966 into a consumer goods (FMCG) company that was then a $2 million hydrogenated cooking oils/fat company, laundry soap, wax and tin containers and later set up Wipro Fluid Power to manufacture hydraulic and pneumatic cylinders in 1975. Even as Wipro made money, Premji continued to look for new opportunities.

In 1977, India's socialist government asked IBM to leave the country. Premji decided to get into computer hardware. In 1979, he began developing his own computer and in 1981, started selling the finished machine—the first in a string of products that would make Wipro India's top-selling computer maker for two decades. The company licensed technology from Sentinel Computers in the United States and began building India's first mini-computers. Premji hired managers who were computer illiterate, and strong on business experience. They learnt quickly about technology and made hardware an extremely profitable venture. It was only a matter of time before Wipro engineers started developing software packages that were not available off-the-shelf at that time, for hardware customers. This diversified into the IT business in 1980 and subsequently invented the first Indian 8086 chip. In 1992 a lighting business was established and by 2000 listed Wipro Ltd ADRs on New York Stock Exchange.

Operations

Today it has emerged as a multi business and multi location corporate entity. Its businesses range from Consumer Products, Infrastructure Engineering to specialized IT Products & Services. Recently, Wipro had focused on building its enterprise applications business. Wipro realised that global giants who had installed expensive packages like Oracle and SAP wanted to get more out of their investments. American consultancy firms typically charged $125-130 per hour for this while Indian companies did it for $75-80 per hour. It is the global IT services arm of Wipro Limited (in operation since 1945, incorporated 1946). It is headquartered in Bangalore and is the third largest IT services company in IndiaFact: date=June 2007. It has 97,250 employees as of November 4, 2008, including its business process outsourcing (BPO) arm which it acquired in 2002. Due to the company being one of the top three recruiters in India, the present applicant pool for Wipro is over 300,000 applicants. Wipro is a preferred employer for the top talent class in India and recruits from over 160 leading engineering and management colleges.

Wipro Technologies has over 300 customers across U.S., Europe and Japan including 50 of the Fortune 500 companies. Wipro Technologies has alliances with over 100 firms across the World to provide customers with the highest quality of service. The following companies are examples of successful customers of Wipro: Nokia, Cisco Systems, Toshiba TEC, Symantec, Compaq, Pacificorp, Emerson Appliance, Exel, Sanyo Electric, Intel, Goldman Sachs and Fidelity 24/7.