Wipro's banking and financial services vertical is now focusing on newer areas to drive its business and in the last few quarters has been growing 10 per cent year on year.

“We are more a pure-play finance vertical comprising clients in banking, capital market and financial services, unlike some of our peers,” Wipro Technologies Senior Vice-President for Finance Solutions, Mr Soumitro Ghosh, told Business Line . Avoiding comparison, he said some of Wipro's peers include their banking product as well as healthcare (insurance) in the verticalMr Ghosh pointed out that while many people believe that it is an advantage to have a banking product, Wipro believes that not having one can, in fact, be an asset.

“Having a banking product is a bit like making an Airbus. But we are more like Singapore Airlines,” he said, alluding to the fact that while his company implemented solutions around banking products, it didn't want to create its own software.

Wipro uses software from other companies, including Infosys, while implementing banking solutions. For example, the company recently won a contract from Canara Bank to implement centralised core banking solution for three sponsored regional rural banks across 900 branches and this solution will use Infosys' Finacle. “Actually, it is an advantage not to have a product because then you can be agnostic to products.” Mr Ghosh said that if Wipro had a product, there was the danger that clients would perceive that Wipro was more interested in pushing its own product.

Talking about the BFSI (Banking, Financial Services and Insurance) segment, Mr Ghosh said that, contrary to popular belief, the company is doing quite well in this segment when compared with its peers. “This is more of a perceived problem. If you look at one of our peers, they release BFSI figures that include healthcare while we have a separate unit for healthcare.” Some companies include revenues from health insurance companies under the banking and finance vertical, while others classify it as healthcare revenue.

Concerns around Wipro's IT business' growth in the past have stemmed from a declining share in, among others, the banking and financial service vertical. RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland) in a report early February this year said Wipro's declining market share in high-growth verticals/services (including BFSI/Retail/IMS) and higher exposure to low-growth verticals (including telecom) than peers are likely to pose challenges. "We expect the gap in revenue growth to continue between Wipro and its peers," the report said.

Mr Ghosh said Wipro BFSI vertical will also focus on areas such as infrastructure, mobility, analytics, social computing and cloud computing. “We are going to accelerate a lot on BPO and infrastructure,” he said.

Among the big four IT companies, Wipro is the one that gets the least amount of revenues from the BFSI segment. As Mr Ghosh himself pointed out, BFSI accounts for 27 per cent of Wipro's revenues. In the case of Infosys, this is 35 per cent, while TCS and Cognizant get 40 per cent and 42 per cent respectively from the segment.

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