Our attrition is down 4.7% shows we are doing something right, says Wipro's Kurien

After delivering what he considered to be the best growth in the last four quarters, Mr T.K. Kurien, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer, IT Business, Wipro, has reasons to be pleased.

In this interview with Business Line , he discussed attrition, acquisitions, and the right geographic mix. Excerpts:

Everybody complains about Europe, but your business there has grown by 28.8 per cent this quarter compared with 26.5 per cent in the same quarter last year. What is the secret?

I wish I could say that there was a secret. If you look at segments, we are strong in the UK and France, and don't have much strength in Germany. In many countries, more by accident than design, we are seen as a local company because of our local front-end, and this is a big advantage in continental countries.

Attrition is down at Wipro. Is this because of what Wipro did or because of a general industry trend?

If you look at the general industry trend, attrition with competition is down by 1.5 per cent, while our attrition is down by 4.7 per cent, which clearly shows that we are doing something right. Right now, we have linked variable pay to attrition, which means that managers lose money when they lose people. Recently, 950 people put in their papers, but we managed to retain 900 of them. Earlier, it would have been the other way around.

BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) was the best performer, whereas the telecom vertical, your star performer earlier, didn't too well.

We have a lot of R&D in telecom and this was challenging. We are, however, getting better traction with media and with telecom service providers. We want to make our other businesses grow faster so that the percentage of our telecom business becomes lower. The issue is that, with the mix of portfolio that we have, what we do gets overshadowed by what we don't do.

You have now got five $100-million clients. Is this a risk? What if one of them cuts spending?

If one of them cuts spending, it will hurt, but you have to remember that it is a portfolio. It's a risk I'm willing to live with rather than not have those accounts.

America contributes to 52 per cent of your revenues. Is this also a risk that you are willing to live with?

As we are growing our momentum verticals, there will be a shift towards the US in the short term. But in the long term, we want to reduce our exposure to the US to around 30-35 per cent. This may take us around three to five years.

Do you have any immediate acquisition plans?

We will focus on acquisitions that give us technology or customer advantage. We will not acquire just to grow revenue. Some of our competitors seem to plan to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in order to grow revenue. This is a defensive mechanism and is the best way to destroy shareholder value.

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