India’s IT leader Wipro revamps leadership

BANGALORE:India?s software major Wipro announced Friday a rise in profits and a change of leadership as it scrapped its joint chief executive structure and appointed a new boss.The IT bellwether, based in the tech hub of Bangalore, said its joint chief executives Girish Paranjpe and Suresh Vaswani would step down on February 1 and be replaced by T.K. Kurien, who currently heads its eco-energy unit.”There is a change in environment. There is a need for a simpler organisation structure,” chairman and owner Azim Premji said in a statement.”Kurien?s track record with customers, passion for excellence, coupled with strategic thinking and rigour in execution make him uniquely positioned to lead Wipro through the next phase of growth.”Investors appeared unsure, however, with shares in Wipro falling 4.2 percent to 457.9 rupees on the Mumbai stock exchange amid concern about the departure of the joint chief executives, who have been at the group for over two decades.Wipro results for the third quarter showed a rise in consolidated net profit of 9.6 percent to 13.19 billion rupees ($292 million), matching forecasts and up from 12.03 billion rupees a year earlier.The third-largest Indian software exporter also said revenues rose more than 12 percent to 78.29 billion rupees, as it picked up 36 new clients amid growing demand for outsourcing in developed markets.The firm, whose clients include Citibank, Cisco and Credit Suisse, won a large deal from US-based mail and and postage services group Pitney Bowes.Earlier this month, India’s largest software exporter Tata Consultancy Services beat forecasts thanks to strong outsourcing demand, while rival earnings from Infosys missed analysts’ expectations – Yahoonews