Wipro invests in two tech start-ups

Taking note of the IT industry’s need to push the innovative agenda, the country’s third largest software services firm Wipro has invested in technology two start-ups, its chief executive officer of the IT business and executive director TK Kurien said. Speaking at the three-day flagship event of industry body NASSCOM on Wednesday, Kurien added that the company has invested $19 million in the two companies. 

  

“There is innovation capability lying outside the organisation and so there is a need to invest in the same,” he said. More details on the name or business of these companies was not immediately known.  Moving up the value chain through innovation and intellectual property creation is top of the agenda for the $100 billion Indian IT industry. Traditional IT services companies such as Wipro and its peers are currently trying to adapt their business models to the growing popularity of social model, mobility, analytics and cloud. 

  

Audit and consultancy firm KPMG also said on Wednesday that the IT industry will increasingly depend on innovation to achieve its projected growth of $300 billion by 2020. Creating, managing and monetising intellectual property (IP) is expected to drive the industry in the coming decade, the report said. 

  

Nasscom has projected a growth between 13 to 15% for the industry in next financial year translating into addition of $15-17 billion of incremental revenue in 2013-14, with improvement in the economic situation in the US and Europe – the industry’s key growth markets. Kurien also said that he expects next fiscal to be better than the current financial year but was of the view that hiring in the sector will not keep pace with the growth as the industry tries to delink revenues from headcount. 

  

Kurien added that the impact of proposed US Immigration Bill on the Indian IT sector could be felt in the short-term. Concerns over the bill – which is at the conferencing level currently between the US House and the Senate -- haven’t ended yet and that there would be some impact of the bill on sector but only in the short-term.