Wipro’s new Chief Executive Officer Abidali Neemuchwala would be hoping that he could step into the shoes of another former CEO, Vivek Paul, who grew the company into a billion dollar enterprise and got it into the league of one of the top outsourcing companies in the world.

Both Paul and Neemuchwala are lateral recruits – unlike current Executive Vice-Chairman T K Kurien, and former joint CEOs Suresh Vaswani and Girish Paranjpe, all of whom are Wipro insiders.

To begin with, Neemuchwala needs to kick-start growth. The company has been lagging behind its peers and has been in the process of a turnaround for quite a while.

The situation is somewhat similar to cross-town rival Infosys, which has not been growing at the same clip as other peers, according to the CEO of another Bengaluru-based mid-sized company who did not wish to be named. Interestingly, since the arrival of the first non-founder CEO, Infosys is showing signs of a comeback.

Neemuchwala, the two-decade-old veteran from TCS, who still counts many of his former colleagues as close friends, has been going about doing things in a silent but sure manner, according to company insiders. They point to initiatives such as Newton’s cradle, which is an effort to re-skill Wipro employees to tackle both present and future technological challenges.

Meanwhile, internally he has been trying to simplify the organisation structure. In an interview to BusinessLine in August last year, he pointed out the need to simplify considering Wipro’s size and the need to collaborate rather than work in silos.

On the client front, Neemuchwala’s efforts will be towards growing revenues, industry watchers say. “Look at competitors like Infosys, Cognizant and even TCS . As margins are coming under pressure, the focus is on growing revenues,” said Kris Lakshmikanth, CEO of Headhunters India.

This is where re-skilling the workforce for the future comes into play. Also, during his stint at market leader , Neemuchwala had close relationships with many customers and will be looking to define the tech roadmap for these companies, who themselves are going through structural business changes.

As most management gurus say, CEOs need to create an environment within the company that can spark ideas. Neemuchwala believes that Wipro has entrepreneurial culture built into it. His success could well depend on successfully sparking this.

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