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I could go on Constant Reader, but surely, you get the drift. Bangalore is very much Infosys territory. Drop the word Wipro in a congregation of techies and the next 30 minutes, maybe more, will pass quickly in superficial Murthy (N.R. Narayanamurthy, Infosys' Chairman) Premji comparisons, and even more shallow Wipro-Infosys ones.

Wipro can stake claim to being the most misunderstood of India Inc's inhabitants. First, in the early nineties, people carried away by C.K. Prahlad and Gary Hamel's core competence thing-few escaped its influence-found the company's forays into fluid power, consumer care, lighting and financial services inexplicable. Then, in the late 1990s Chairman and Managing Director Azim Hasham Premji's stake in the company (now nudging 85 per cent) came into focus for reasons ranging from allegations of insider trading to comments on his unwillingness to share wealth with the very people who had helped him create it. It didn't help when a posse of senior execs left the company and aired its views on the sharing bit.

The turn of the century changed things a bit. Analysts approved of the company's emphasis on high-end R&D and technology-related software services. Wipro, even the non-believers grudgingly admitted, was the brahmin among Indian software companies; the best-poised to ''go up the value chain'', a phrase popular with equity analysts and technology journalists. Much of the company's work in this area was in the telecommunications domain and with the sector facing the brunt of 2001's global recession, it wasn't long before the positive buzz about Wipro died out. Wipro Technologies' 2001-02 results (this, the software services division, accounts for 66 per cent of the company's revenues and 90 per cent of its profits before interest and taxes) weren't exactly unimpressive: sales increased 28 per cent over the previous year to Rs 2,290 crore; profits before interest and taxes, 28 per cent to Rs 785.1 crore. Still, the January-March quarter hadn't been kind to the division. Revenues had dipped 3.4 per cent compared to the October-December quarter. Worse, the company's guidance of estimated revenues of $123 million (Rs 602.9 crore) in the April-June quarter was a mere 2.3 per cent higher than its revenues of $120.2 million (Rs 589.2 crore) in the January-March quarter.

Only all along, and unbeknownst to most, the company was putting the last pieces of its reinvention strategy in place. The emphasis on high-end software services will remain-a side bet on which the company will collect once the telecom sector sees an upswing-but Wipro will also focus on products and it consulting, the last a natural extension of its 3,500-strong enterprise solutions practice that accounted for close to 50 per cent of Wipro Technologies' business last year. There are other strands to this reinvention as well. A new division, Wipro Healthcare & Life Sciences that will drive the company's efforts in that space. A strong systems integration play by another division, Wipro Infotech. Even fresh investments in the one business the company started off with, Wipro Consumer Care.

This then isn't the story of a corporation in search of a soul (intriguing as that sounds). It is the tale of one company's ongoing tryst with transformation, a refrain echoed by Premji during an interview with Business Today. ''Unless you are constantly transforming yourself, you are finished.'' (See We Are Back In Ramp-Up Mode).

A case of identity

Even the kaleidoscopic sunflower logo created by the Paris-based Shombit Sengupta for the company-you can see it everywhere in Wipro, embroidered onto the shirts of its execs, on coffee mugs and posters, even on a dish antenna aimed at the skies on the terrace of the company's corporate centre at Doddakannelli near Bangalore-didn't help forge a distinct identity for Wipro as much as events of the past three years did. It was over this period that Wipro Technologies rapidly became Wipro. The division employs 9,626 of Wipro's 14,000-strong workforce and boasts a return on capital just over 100 per cent. Just two years ago, in 1999-2000, it accounted for less than half of Wipro's revenues.

The company's new division, Wipro Healthcare and Life Sciences may be addressing a large market; its oldest business, Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting, may have provided it with the funds to enter the hardware and software businesses; and Wipro Infotech could be considered a serious player in the pan-Asian Systems Integration business, but chances are, when someone says Wipro, it is Wipro Technologies to which they are referring.

''In the last three years,'' says Wipro Ltd Vice Chairman and Wipro Technologies CEO Vivek Paul, ''Wipro has gone from being a solid Indian company to a solid global corporate''. There have been other changes as well and Paul rattles them off with the practiced ease of a professional communicator-every Tuesday, he sends out, from his base in Santa Clara, California, a note on the week's highlights in the division, and in the software industry in general to Wipro Technologies' employees. Courtesy its emphasis on processes-Premji labels these a pre-requisite to growth-such as Six Sigma and SEI CMM Level 5, wt has been able to pitch itself as a ''thought leader'' and ''the best at absorbing technologies'' to clients.

Close to a quarter of the division's revenues come from technology services in what insiders term the telecom and inter-networking domain, largely targeted at telecommunication equipment manufacturers. The flame-out in the sector over the past two years hasn't dampened the enthusiasm of Dr A.L Rao, a long-time Wipro hand who now heads the practice-previously with ECIL, he played a part in writing the OS for the first Indian computer-Paul, and Premji. Still, analysts like Sandeep Dhingra, who tracks the software sector for JP Morgan, believe this is a chink in Wipro Technologies' armour. ''Overall, the risks for Wipro going forward are that the technology sector remains a problem area, and pricing-pressure, which is a worry for the industry as a whole.''

The foray into it consulting-a logical extension of the enterprise solutions practice-should help hedge this risk. Only, as another analyst puts it, ''Wipro seems to be in a hurry; Infosys started its consulting arm three years ago and it is only starting to make a difference now.''

Also helping will be the innovation drive (See All About Ideas)-four projects in wt and two in Wipro Infotech at this point in time-which measures its success, according to Executive Vice President Vineet Agrawal, ''not in terms of intellectual property or products, but in terms of contribution to revenues.'' The immediate target: 20 per cent of the company's revenues in the next three years. Then, there's the planned fresh investment in the consumer care business to which Agrawal is shortly moving; the present head P.S. Pai retires in July-end and magnanimously asks everyone ''to watch out for what Vineet will do''. That, and the organic and inorganic growth in Wipro Healthcare & Life Sciences, should take care of business. As for the soul, Wipro's always had one says Paul, built around values that are relevant to employees, customers, stakeholders, and the society at large. ''It's just that we are tough and we make tough decisions sometimes.'' That's just what the company will have to continue to do in these tough times.

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