The Hindu Business Line : Wipro to scale up size of acquisitions

Commenting on the acquisitions being made by IT companies, Mr Azim Premji, Chairman, Wipro, said the firm had acquired six companies in last nine months in a bid to expand its presence in Europe. He, however, said that Indian IT companies still have a long way to go before they can acquire companies beyond $100 million.

Big league

Addressing the India Economic Summit here, Mr Premji said that in the next few years, Indian IT companies such as Infosys, TCS, Wipro would be at par with some of the leading global companies in terms of market capitalisation.

"Currently, Infosys, TCS and Wipro come in the top 16-17 companies globally in terms of market capitalisation. We are growing three times faster than our foreign counterparts, so in the next 2-3 years, the difference will be very less, we will be in the league of top 10 companies," Mr Premji said.

Wage inflation

Expressing his optimism on the IT sector, Mr Premji said that India currently had only a small share of the global outsourcing market, which indicated that there was immense potential to be tapped. Dismissing any concern on wage inflation, he said that even if wage inflation in India continues at 14-15 per cent and in the western world it increases by 4 per cent every year, then also it would take another 20 years for the salaries of the economies in these two regions to converge.

Competition

However, he cautioned that India would face competition from emerging economies from Latin America, Russia, East European economies and countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines. Commenting on the availability of talent pool, Mr Premji said that Wipro currently hires about 15-18 per cent of people who are not from engineering backgrounds.

Mr Rajendra Pawar, CEO of NIIT, said that the Government must actively get involved in the area of education through which India could tap in to 47 million graduates. India is the only country to have a labour surplus in contrast to other countries such as China, Japan and US, which would all fall short of labour, said Mr Pawar.

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