Wipro Digital President Rajan Kohli On Digital Transformation And The Firm’s Biggest Growth Drivers

“If a client comes to us with a problem and they say ‘OK, what should be my next product’ or ‘Which of my products is more valuable than the others?’ the approach we take is not one a typical strategy house would take. There’s a more design-led approach where we really understand what is valuable to their end customer, and then work backwards from there,” Kohli said.

Transforming Digital

India-based IT services giant Wipro has seen success in digitally transforming enterprise-sized clients with its mixture of technology, strategy, ad, and design expertise. However, it is increasingly delivering that transformation to mid-sized clients as well, Wipro Digital President Rajan Kohli told CRN.

IT services generates 96.7 percent of the company’s total revenue, and of that revenue an overwhelming amount came from Wipro’s stable of enterprise clients.

“The top 100 of our clients give us almost 60, 70 percent of our revenue. But medium-sized clients are also spending on technology,” Kohli said. “We don’t want work with fintechs to sell to them. But we work with fintechs and healthtechs to bring them to the enterprise clients. A lot of times our clients ask us for introductions, or sometimes they ask the fintechs or healthtechs to approach through us so we can be the integrator of their services.”

The 160,000-employee company, which began as a vegetable oil company in 1945, is expecting two percent growth this quarter.

Kohli talked to CRN about how Wipro is setting itself apart from competitors in 2019.

Why are businesses calling Wipro?

“What we’re seeing in the market is, in the past, clients really had a very segmented approach to buying. If they wanted strategy consulting, they would go to a strategy consulting house. If they wanted innovation, they would go to an innovation house. If they wanted marketing, they would go to an agency. If they wanted technology, they would go to an IT provider. Now it doesn’t work like that, for several reasons.

“First, there’s not really any strategy that’s not technology-oriented. The board is asking questions that need technology answers. So strategy houses are not always the best fit. Because they don’t necessarily have the right technology answers. Technically any product has huge technology in it. There are infinite examples in every industry. Obviously, technology has to play a big part in both strategy, design, and product design. So we feel there is a place where a company, which is best-in-class strategy consulting, best-in-class strategy design, best-in-class marketing agency, along with a tech company, has a huge role to play.”

What are some of the problems Wipro is solving?

“We’re not a typical strategy company. So if a client comes to us with a problem and they say ‘OK, what should be my next product’ or ‘which of my products is more valuable than the others?’ the approach we take is not one a typical strategy house would take. There’s a more design-led approach where we really understand what is valuable to their end customer, and then work backwards from there.

“Then we combine what we call strategy, design and technology; where design is talking about desirability, but strategy is really talking about feasibility, ‘Can this be done? Can this be afforded?’ and then tech is talking about viability, ‘Ok, if it can be done, if it can be afforded, is it actually possible to deliver?’

“So we feel that all these three have to be done together. That’s where we come into play.”

So you offer all of these services under one roof?

“Our approach of course is not what a typical strategy consulting house will do, where it is about spreadsheets and number crunching. Our approach, if a client asks us a similar question around ‘What do I need to innovate in this product? What should be my next product for this market? How can I take this product to a new market?’ Our approach will be very strategy-design led, customer-journey led, where we will truly try to understand what is it that the client’s end customers are looking for, then not only make those recommendations, but actually build the rapid prototyping teams to innovate scale, deliver those innovations. That’s another challenge our customers are facing today. A lot of times they get advice at the board level, and the board looks at that, and they say, ‘OK, we understand you need to do this, but we don’t know how to do it.’”

So Wipro is there for the how?

“Today the problem for our clients is not the ‘why?’ They all understand they need to do it. It’s the ‘what?’ but a lot of times it’s about the ‘how?’ Wipro’s strength is really the ‘how.’ That’s where we lived our life, explaining to our clients how they go about it. Really working with them. Not making innovation happen to them, but actually innovate with them.

“That’s why I believe what we have between our strategy, design, and technology, is a more comprehensive value proposition. The design looks at desirability, what does the market need from this? What does the end customer need? Strategy looks at viability. Can the business afford it? Is it the right thing to do? Then technology is really about feasibility. If this is needed, can we actually deliver it? All those decisions now happen at the same time, at the same instance, and not in a siloed way.

“We have a saying within Wipro: ‘We should go after those accounts who have spent millions of dollars with the BCG’s and McKinsey’s because they have now created the ground for us to land.’

“It is true in most cases where their chief operating officer, their CIO now, are being bombarded by the board and they don’t know what they should do next. That is the how that I talk about. They have to get from point A to point B, but its not a linear journey.”

What are the challenges of innovating an enterprise-level customer?

“There is a reason why banks who spend billions of dollars cannot innovate as fast as small fintech firms. The reason really is, they have intelligence embedded so deep into the legacy systems, and the processes are so cumbersome that they don’t know how to become nimble like a fintech.”

“We innovate in two ways. Internally we call it incubation or inoculation. Incubation is when they themselves want to set up an new innovation product, method, or company, or new go to market totally outside their existing construct so they can be as nimble as a fintech, because there is no legacy, everything is built ground up. We call that incubation. In some cases, that’s the right way to go.

“Then there is inoculation. Inoculation means they had to really transform from the core because incubation is not an option for them because if they don’t inoculate, the entire company could be at risk.

“We work with some very, very large clients where we start off in one or two value chains, make them agile and innovate around those value chains, then scale to additional value chains. Any client will typically have 10 to 25 different value chains, across which all their businesses is built, and that is the journey we take.

“Of late, we have started working with mid-sized enterprise clients, because with the technology now, actually, scale is no longer the true differentiator. Agility is the main differentiator, and the smaller companies which actually have less of legacy, are more nimble. We are getting a lot of pull from those clients, which in the past we tried to stay away from the medium sized clients.”

How do you create value working with mid-sized companies?

“The top 100 of our clients give us almost 60, 70 percent of our revenue. But medium sized clients are also spending on technology.

“We don’t want work with fintechs to sell to them. But we work with fintechs and healthtechs to bring them to the enterprise clients. A lot of times our clients ask us for introductions, or sometimes they ask the fintechs or healthtechs to approach through us so we can be the integrator of their services.

“We don’t want to acquire these companies. We have two approaches: sometimes we do a minority investment. We have a venture fund which is headquartered in the (San Francisco) Bay Area. But we invest in the U.S. We invest in Israel. We invest in India.

“But unlike a traditional equity investor, our real aim is to leverage our presence in enterprise accounts, to the benefit of these smaller companies and the rest of our clients. Because our clients are always more comfortable if Wipro certifies that yes, this works. Second, because we understand their environment so well, they trust Wipro to bring more contextualized solutions to them. They can trust that we can sell them something and not run away. So we feel that the venture fund works every well for us.”

Where do you see companies placing their bets in 2019?

“Data sciences. Cloud. Cybersecurity. Connected devices.

“We work in an ecosystem where we create startups. So every month we do startup camps in the Bay Area, where dozens of these companies come pitch to us. And scale is not the differentiator. Agility is the differentiator.

“In the past you wanted to reach scale, so you have economies of scale. Then you can be cheaper than the next guy or you can be more omni present, because you’ll be on more shelves. You’ll have more coverage compared to someone who is smaller.

“Now, actually, it is agility that is the differentiator, because a medium-sized enterprise, through the leverage of technology and through the leverage of internet, or e-commerce or mobile channel actually can have the same amount of availability or omnipresence as a big guy.”

What will be the biggest drivers of Wipro’s business in 2019?

“I wish I had a crystal ball I could look into for you. Based on what we know, we have invested in four areas where we are going to double down our investment.

“I would say if we put our money where our mouth is, these are the areas. Digital. By digital I mean design, business transformation, process orchestration, systems of engagement. That’s one area we’re doubling down our investment, in types of people, talent, etc. Second is cyber security. We feel that’s going to be huge. We have seen tremendous growth in that area and as everything becomes digital, and everything becomes connected, it is bound for more and more investments.

“I’m not calling out automation because automation is a horizontal that cuts across everything. Its there in digital. I’ts there in cybersecurity. It’s there in everything that we do. Third, of course cloud.

“Depending on which report you read anywhere from 50 to 80 percent of worlds loads will be on cloud between 2021 to 2022. So I think we have seen momentum, so we are doubling down and investing in the right people who can consult with clients. Going back to ‘why’ and ‘how,’ we don’t need to tell clients they need to be on cloud. We need to tell them how they get there. How they get their applications there. What the right sequence is, what if anything they should not move to public cloud, and how do they orchestrate between multiple clouds and hybrid clouds.

“The fourth area is engineering, especially product engineering, software product engineering, because everything is becoming software. There isn’t any hardware product that isn’t driven by software. Those are the four areas and I feel bullish about the four areas.”