Wipro makes undisclosed investment in business commerce platform Tradeshift

The deal was made by Wipro's investment arm Wipro Ventures

India's third largest software exporter Wipro has invested an undisclosed amount in San Francisco's cloud-based business commerce platform Tradeshift through its strategic investment arm Wipro Ventures.

The quantum of the investment will be used to develop Tradeshift's innovative applications, trade financing solutions, platform and business-to-business marketplace ecosystem.

After acquiring Appirio, a $500 million buy to strengthen cloud-based services, this the second investment for cloud-based service delivery.

Wipro chief executive Abidali Neemuchwala had earlier said his company was regularly evaluating start-up to get brilliant ideas that could drive digital innovation.

Wipro Venture arm evaluates and invests in startups that work on emerging areas such as artificial intelligence, security and automation. The $100 million fund, which has Wipro scion Rishad Premji spearheading it, has made investments in nine companies so far.

The company on Monday announced in a statement that it has also signed a partnership with Tradeshift to offer cloud-based source-to-pay services. The partnership is aimed at helping Wipro's customers push digitalization and automation in services provided under source-to-pay solution such as procurement, finance and accounting functions.

Adding value through Tradeshift's capabilities in product database, e-invoicing, procurement automation, mobility-enabled access, and global supplier risk management, Wipro would standardise and expand its business process as a service (BPaaS) offerings. In turn, businesses can automate processes, connect stakeholders and help customers collect and analyse data around all of their transactions, covering invoices, purchase orders and payments.

"With transformation as the prime objective enterprises are ready to adopt, the next generation of process automation services accelerating the digitisation of business processes. Joining forces with an innovative company such as Tradeshift will provide our customers access to their global, cloud-based supply chain platform," said Nagendra P Bandaru, senior vice-president and Global head, Business Process Services, Wipro.

Christian Lanng, chief executive and co-founder, Tradeshift, said this partnership has already "delivered two new joint enterprise clients". "Wipro's global scale and procurement services expertise will amplify the benefits gained from an agile supply chain enabled by a single, digital connection between customers and their entire supply bases."