As the elder son of Mr Premji moves into a new role of general manager, treasury and investor relations (IR), at Wipro’s corporate headquarters on Sarjapur road starting Wednesday, he will only need to drive around 5 km every day. For somebody who is being looked upon as an obvious heir to inherit around 80% of Wipro stake along with his brother, moving up the corporate ladder continues to be a normal process — something Mr Premji himself has ensured ever since he proposed that his elder son join Wipro.

Infosys Technologies, International Business Machines Corp (IBM), Hewlett-Packard (HP), Electronic Data Systems (EDS) won orders worth A$450 million ($355 million) over five years from Telstra Corporation.

Wipro on Wednesday, Jun 3 said that the accounts receivable from GM was less than $8 million and that it will be unaffected by the U.S. automaker's bankruptcy filing.

In an interview with BusinessWeek Premji said, "In my opinion it's a very drastic initiative." He was referring to a bill in the US Senate basically preventing firms from hiring H1Bs in the US or bringing in holders of L1 visas for semi-skilled workers.

Europe’s third-biggest oil company-BP, which started outsourcing its back office functions many years ago, is currently fleshing out new contracts for outsourcing business application maintenance, development and support, as the oil major plans to bring down its operational costs and ensure better focus on its core business.

Azim Premji, Wirpo Chairman said, "We are growing more than 50 per cent a year in the Middle East. We see higher potential in markets that have not been penetrated such as the Middle East, Portugal and Brazil."

"Our net income would decrease if the government of India imposes additional taxes or withdraws or reduces tax benefits or other incentives ,~T India~Rs third biggest software company Wipro said in a recent regulatory filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Soon after the World Bank disclosure, Wipro has said in a regulatory filing on Jan 13, 2009, that its revenue from World Bank was insignificant and its "inability to get future business from World Bank will not adversely affect our business and results of operations".

Serial entrepreneur and investor Jaithirth (Jerry) Rao says: “We did go through a bad time but none of it will last. The industry has done well and will continue to do so. We are on track and get back soon; we will get further clarity in the coming months.’’

IT bellwether Infosys Technologies, too, had raised concerns that curbs on movement of working visa holders could affect its business activities.

"Restrictions on immigration in the US may affect our ability to compete for and provide services to clients in the US, which could hamper our growth and cause our revenue to decline," Wipro said in its annual filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Wipro, which counts Bharti Airtel, Unitech Wireless and Dena Bank among its top customers, said with 10-15 % lower costs than India, and availability of required technical skills across different programming languages including Windows and Unix, Egypt is emerging as an attractive location for offshoring.

Krish Gopalakrishnan, the Infy Chief Executive said that company plans to add more than 1000 new employees as part of a big US expansion in anticipation of growth resuming in 2010.

Wipro has also selected The Hackett Group, a global strategic advisory firm, to provide empirical data, best practices and world-class performance insights on the development of its innovative bundled solution platform, it said in a release here.

The solution simPlify, allows employers to reduce and control cost as it provides an opportunity to centralise and standardise processes while eliminating duplicative management structures.

Infosys, which values each employee at nearly Rs 1 crore, has been providing interest free home loans to needy employees for several years. So far over 2,000 employees (with experience of five years and above) have availed the loan facility accounting for a cumulative disbursements of Rs 80 crore, company officials said.

The IT major's total value of human resources, which includes both software professionals and support staff, is pegged at Rs 1,02,133 crore for the fiscal ended March 2009.

According to the company's annual report, the human resources' value of Rs 1,02,133 crore during fiscal 2009 was for 1,04,850 employees during the same period.

On average, the same translates into a value of about Rs 97 lakh for each employee.

The Obama administration has restricted the hiring of H-1B visa-holders by companies bailed out by the Federal government and recently announced a plan to end tax incentives for American entities generating jobs overseas.

Speaking on the recent reforms in the corporate tax in US, Premji said on Thursday, May 7, “We are reading too much into it...one needs to wait and see.”

India’s third biggest information technology (IT) company, Wipro, saw its revenues in the three months to end-March decline 3% from the preceding quarter but managed a slight improvement in profits with help from a depreciating rupee.

The Bangalore-based firm had a net profit of Rs 880 crore in the same quarter of FY'08, Wipro said in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange
.
The total income surged 13.55% at Rs 6,583.20 crore in the March quarter from Rs 5,797.40 crore in the same period last fiscal.

Going through the site, it does appear as if Nokia Mobile Broadcast Solutions has been in a bit of a limbo for two years - the latest brochure for their services is dated Feb 2007, and the last announcement for the segment was a DVB-H partnership in Malaysia in June 2007.

"The crisis started in the financial sector and recovery also seems to be happening first in that sector," S Gopalakrishnan, deputy chairman, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII)-southern region, told reporters here on Saturday.

Rajiv Shah, who was heading Wipro’s technology business unit, will now head the newly-created healthcare business unit, and will report to the joint chief executive Suresh Vaswani. Mr Shah will be replaced by GK Prasanna. Mr Prasanna was the head of the technology infrastructure services
at the company.

The latest Greenpeace ranking saw Wipro’s rank move up largely due to its efforts in energy efficiency and structured programme for effective e-waste management.

Nilekani also said that the company with go on with the recruitment process amidst recession, but, 'very selectively'.

According to The Australian, the decision to shift from IBM to Infosys could result in hundreds of job losses locally and in Bangalore, where IBM operates outsourcing centres.

The five units are IT services, product engineering services which include research and development (R&D) and outsource product development (OPD), testing, infrastructure management and technical support (IMTS), and a new area called knowledge services. Currently, MindTree has two business units — IT services contributing 79% in revenues and R&D 21%.

"All the call letters that have been sent out will be honoured... we are sticking to our numbers... we will honour the commitments we have made," Infosys co-chairman Nandan Nilekani told reporters on the sidelines of a CII event.

This brings up to four the number of firms interested in buying a majority stake in Satyam, whose founder Ramalinga Raju confessed to a Rs.74 billion ($1.5 billion) fraud in January.

People close to the situation said the 5- year-old tech start-up Sloka Telecom has put a price tag of Rs 30-35 crore but there is no agreement on a final transaction.

The induction process was delayed by several months because of the global economic crisis that deepened last year, forcing overseas clients to pare technology budgets and delay projects in an attempt to cut spending.

Infosys board member and director for human resources Mohandas Pai confirmed that there were some separations from Infosys Australia. Responding to a mail from ET, he said: “We have had an organisational restructuring in our Australia subsidiary and as a result, some positions have become redundant. It is the first time after the acquisition that this is being done.”

The company has, however, countered this view, saying that it’s not averse to risk and has taken the plunge after understanding what it means to them.

At least two people familiar with the discussions told ET on condition of anonymity that while Infosys was evaluating the potential acquisition targets, a final transaction could be still far away. “Especially, since there is no agreement yet on the valuation of BCC and the SAP services unit of Ciber,” one of the sources told ET last week.

Singapore-based Nalanda Capital has picked up a 2.36% stake in outsourcing product  development firm Aztecsoft Ltd on Thursday. Nalanda India Fund picked up the stake for Rs 3.8 crore from ICICI Prudential Life Insurance on the Bombay Stock Exchange through bulk deal route. The deal is interesting as Nalanda picked up a stake in MindTree Ltd earlier this month.

MindTree acquired Aztecsoft last year for around Rs 400 crore in one of the biggest deals in domestic IT space. MindTree holds an 80% stake Aztecsoft, while rest is held by trusts and public shareholders. Nalanda bought nearly a 2% stake in MindTree for Rs 15.6 crore from venture capital firm Walden International on February 3. Going by Nalanda's previous  investments, the firm is likely to pick up more stake in these two firms.

Indian software giant Infosys Technologies bagged 14th place in the list of top 20 global companies focused on grooming not just professionals but leaders. Infy achieved this honour in 'The 2008 Best Companies for Leaders' survey conducted by management consultancy Hay Group and Chief Executive Magazine.

The survey reveals that these companies which are focused on developing leaders will not only survive and thrive in the current financial crisis, but also would be well positioned for growth, once the economy gets revived. 3M Company tops the list, followed by Procter & Gamble and General Electric on the second and third position respectively.

Last year, about 1.5% of IT services staff or about 1,000 employees figured among the bottom performers. This year, the percentage has shot up to about 3.5%. About 600 of such non-performers have left the company already this year.

In response, Wipro plans to focus on providing operations services and helping clients cut costs, Wipro joint Chief Executive Girish Paranjpe told Reuters in an interview.

As per the media reports, the IT major has asked its senior managers to give lowest performance rating to the 'underperforming' 5 per cent as part of the company's consolidated relative ranking (CRR). Infosys has around one lakh employees globally.

“We have issued showcause notice as the company has not paid service tax on the underwriting commission paid by Infosys towards American Depository Receipt (ADR) for the years 2003, 2005 and 2006,” said a senior tax official.

A senior official at one of the companies bid-ding for Fidelity’s back-office business said, “IBM has offered to pay around $150 mn for the unit while Infosys has indicated that it could pay up to $180 million,” he said, requesting anonymity. Though Wipro is still left in the fray, the tussle is between IBM and Infy as of now, a person involved in the negotiations said.

It reported a negative headcount addition of 1,092 for its global IT services segment and 226 for its BPO division. The first time that Wipro reported a negative headcount addition was for the first quarter of the current fiscal. The only positive increase in headcount was in its India and Middle-East IT services business segments. Wipro has effected a 7-8% hike in wages for its offshore employees, much lower than the 12-14% of last year.

“Very clearly, the banks and other financial institutions are on the path of transforming their business through technology by bringing in standard platforms,” Haragopal M, head of Finacle business told ET.

"I am little more optimistic about the India situation. The reason is we have not been ravaged by the financial crisis like most of the developed world," Premji said on the sidelines of a briefing on the firm's third quarter results.

Some eight years ago, in 2000, Wipro carried out an initial public offering (IPO) of American Depository Shares in an effort to raise capital from the US market. As a part of that effort, it offered a small number of shares to its employees and clients at the IPO price through the Directed Share Program (DSP).

Infosys has now hired global HR consultant Mercer to work on the overhaul and the process will be completed before June. “Our current performance management system does not meet the requirements of a 100,000-plus organisation. The new system is undergoing evaluation by Mercer,’’ TV Mohandas Pai, Infosys’ director for HR, education, research and administration

On Wednesday, when Ramalinga Raju confessed to cooking Satyam’s books, Infosys was among the few IT stocks that ended higher. The stock was up 1.7% to Rs 1,187, as compared to Wipro and TCS that ended almost flat at Rs 243.30 and Rs 503.70, respectively. HCL Technologies, the other top player, was down 15%.

"We have already made the announcement that we will not poach any Satyam employee. We will not proactively approach their clients and customers either... but clients have to decide for themselves and they have the right to choose their partner at work," Infosys HR Director Mohan Das Pai said.

The knowledge services business unit of Infosys BPO is headed by a former Infosys Technologies executive. So is the vice-president and head of sales of Infosys BPO. Communication, the second-largest revenue earning customer segment for the BPO, is also headed by an executive formerly with Infosys Technologies.