With stability, it's now about executing strategy: Abidali Neemuchwala, Wipro

On Wednesday, Bangalore based Wipro posted lukewarm numbers. New CEO Abidali Neemuchwala spoke to ET about the broader contours of his current strategy, his experience of working with billionaire chairman Azim Premji and how long Wipro’s turnaround is expected to take. Edited excerpts:

When do we start seeing industry-level growth rates from Wipro?

It (turnaround) does take time. I have intermediate timelines in mind. Publicly we are not talking about how long it takes. It’s not something that happens tomorrow, but it can’t take forever.

What are some of the things that need to be fixed on priority?

Things that needed to be fixed on an immediate basis — I had enough time to do that even before the announcement (of becoming CEO) because I was in the organisation for over 9 months. Now stability is there and now it is about executing on the strategy. You wouldn’t hear of more changes being made. What you will hear is periodically how we are progressing on the strategy. Change has its own repercussions. I think we’ve done an excellent leadership transition.

So we should expect consistency soon?

Absolutely. You should be able to see a trajectory.

How is pricing play out? Is pricing pressure significantly impacting margins?

I wouldn’t call it a pricing war. What I would say is that if you are an incumbent, you have to proactively say that new technologies are available and with things like robotics, I can do this faster, better and cheaper. You don’t do that as an incumbent, somebody else will come and tell the customer that this can be done. And then the customer will go to the market. The key is your relationship with the customer and your proactiveness to take new ideas to the customer.


Is the board in midst of large-scale revamp?

Both are new board members (Patrick Dupuis and Patrick Ennis) bring with them a lot of wealth in innovation, areas of organisational change management and transformation and they are culturally diverse — both from expertise perspective and diversity perspective, our board has been quite enriched. I think we have a very well-functioning board and I don’t see anything beyond what I’ve already said.

In your first 80 days, how has it been working with Mr Premji? What is Mr Premji’s assessment of where Wipro needs to be?

Mr. Premji is obviously a great leader. He has a great legacy in the industry. He has given me a free hand to run the company and whenever I need, he’s always available for advice and guidance. I get some great insights from him— it’s an honour and a pleasure to work with him.