Amalgamation of Spectramind soon

Completes transformation into Wipro BPO

Next month, barring some as yet unknown surprise, Spectramind will cease to exist as it was known to the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry "" one of the pioneers of information technology enabled business in the country.

On July 21, at Wipro Limited's annual general meeting, shareholders will be asked to approve a resolution to amalgamate Spectramind Limited, Mauritius and Spectramind Limited, Bermuda, with Wipro Limited.

Wipro owns both, after buying Spectramind, mostly a call centre business, from its founder Raman Roy. That Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro Limited, holds the majority stake and votes in his company will mean the amalgamation is as good as done.

As fully-owned subsidiaries of Wipro, their transfer will result in no additional issue or allotment of shares by Wipro to their members.

The shares of the two companies will be cancelled, and the companies dissolved without winding up their business, Wipro said, in the notice to its shareholders, convening their meeting. Wipro's board of directors approved the scheme of amalgamation at a meeting on April 22, the notice said.

Post the amalgamation, Spectramind will have completed the full, as hardnosed businessmen would say, logical journey "" from an entrepreneurial effort to growing business to becoming an important part of a much larger body corporate. Earlier this year, Wipro had already got the go-ahead from regulators to change the BPO business' name from Wipro Spectramind to Wipro BPO Solutions.

Wipro's annual report for the year to March 2005 says Spectramind grew 56 per cent last year, thus becoming an important contributor to Wipro's flagship "global IT services and products" business.

Roy helped build it to where he walked away with more than Rs 450 crore before taxes in the 2002 Spectramind sale to Wipro. He made some of his staff rich too, when Wipro gave them stock options. Those who exercised the options, and later sold some of the shares in a buy-back by Wipro, made over Rs 60 crore.

Wipro's notice says, the amalgamation will help it consolidate its business operations worldwide and provide significant impetus to its own growth.

The company aims to present one front to global customers, at a time when it wants to offer "end-to-end" solutions to them.