Wipro's Bagful of Ideas ; Across Businesses Ranging From Engineering to Personal Products, Azim Premji has Quietly Built a Non-It Portfolio That's Worth a Billion Dollars That's Roughly a Fourth of the Annual Revenues of the Infotech Flagship. Somewhere in That Assortment May Lurk Wipro's Next Big Thing.

Business Today › November 25, 2009

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Summary

In an office located down a narrow passage in the C block of Wipro's Sarjapur Road headquarters, 47-year-old Vineet Agrawal, President of Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting (WCCL), is up to his elbows in work. Agrawal is wrapping up quarterly reviews and planning strategy for a division that is as old as the company itself (which started in 1947 as Western India Palm Refined Oils, a vegetable oil trading company). After a few quarters of struggle, this unit is finally showing some signs of stability, with its Santoor soaps sneaking ahead of Dettol to become the third-most popular personal wash brand across urban and rural India.

Now, Agrawal, who joined Wipro way back in 1982, is looking to take his company to the next level by first expanding his consumer care products out of India into East Asia and beyond, and then rapidly ramping up a slew of new initiatives he has either built or bought over the last few years.

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Extract

Wipro's Bagful of Ideas ; Across Businesses Ranging From Engineering to Personal Products, Azim Premji has Quietly Built a Non-It Portfolio That's Worth a Billion Dollars That's Roughly a Fourth of the Annual Revenues of the Infotech Flagship. Somewhere in That Assortment May Lurk Wipro's Next Big Thing.

Agrawal is only one part of the emerging face of Wipro, a company most readers would immediately link to its $4 billon-plus (Rs 19,200- croreplus) IT business. But there's much more, both old (other than vegetable oil and consumer care, there's also hydraulics) and new (clean energy and waste). The result? An eclectic and seemingly esoteric mix of businesses that aren't even remotely connected ...

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