IT-major Wipro has plans to hire 600 Saudi youth and train them to become thorough IT professionals in the next three-four years as part of its ambitious expansion plans in Saudi Arabia. Wirpo’s counterpart, Wipro Arabia Ltd., is currently executing its expansion strategy for existing projects. It is also planning to hire hundreds of Saudi nationals. 

Arab News Riyadh Bureau chief Ghazanfar Ali Khan caught up with Thomas George, general manager and business head of Wipro Arabia Ltd., a joint venture between Wipro Ltd. and Dar Al-Riyadh, to gather the latest news on the company’s development plans, challenges and achievements as well as some off-topic talking points.

Thomas is responsible for business growth, customer acquisitions and satisfaction, service delivery, business operations, etc., across the region, which includes Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

He has more than 20 years of experience in the IT industry, his core experience has been in sales, business development, marketing and strategic leadership.

Thomas is a Wipro veteran and has spent more than a decade in Wipro in various roles across various geographical locations.
 
These are highlights of the interview.
 
How is Wipro Arabia Ltd. doing in terms of business and which are the major projects currently being executed by your company and what are the major challenges?

Wipro is present in the Kingdom for more than a decade now.

The company has a huge plan to hire and train more than 600 Saudi youngsters.

We have undertaken large turnkey and transformation programs and some of them include large airlines.

Wipro Arabia has been engaged for sustenance of large IT infrastructure, application development, infrastructure enhancements and consulting.

For a large science and technology university, the company has implemented a turnkey ERP-Student Life Cycle Management solution.

This is in addition to a major project of a large telecom service provider with which Wipro entered into a five-year partnership for deploying an end-to-end IT solution covering OSS/BSS and underlying infrastructure components. 

On the top of that, I would like to point out that Wipro has enabled the campus of a large women’s university with a world-class IT eco-system complemented by the best IT infrastructure, system and support.

This will transform women’s education in the Middle East.

Among others, Wipro is also the chosen partner in IT infrastructure build for a large petrochemical company, the overall IT partner for a large research institute, a strategic partner for a leading hospital in Saudi Arabia for implementing HIS system and the underlying infrastructure for a multi-million dollar turnkey IT systems program, a large government department for implementation and rolling out ERP solution globally.

Wipro today is among the top five IT service organizations in the Kingdom and is engaged with customers across various industries like oil and gas, utilities, EPC, telecom, BFSI, government, transport and health care.

We have been consistently doing well in this geography.

Our services revenue grew at a CAGR of 43 percent for the period CY 2010-2013, as against the market growth rate of 13 percent (3.3 times the market growth).

In a competitive market like Saudi Arabia, how do you differentiate Wipro from its competitors and define what makes the brand unique?

Wipro Arabia is a joint venture company with Dal Al-Riyadh, a well-diversified group in Saudi Arabia.

Over the years, Wipro Arabia has emerged as a strategic IT partner to some of the biggest names in the Kingdom.

Our investments in the local market in terms of development centers, a decade plus presence, investments in local talent, proven credentials in having executed large complex programs, comprehensive portfolio of application, infrastructure services and ability to take large turnkey programs have been some of our differentiators.

We continue to invest in building strong delivery teams to ensure a high-level of customer delight and also invest in localization.
 
Is Saudi Arabia the fastest growing market for Wipro in the Middle East and Africa region in terms of revenue and customer base and if so what has been the share of Saudi Arabia annually in the company’s overall revenue?

The Kingdom has proved to be the growth engine for Wipro among emerging markets.

We continue to be positive about the growth potential of this region and will continue to invest in the geography.

The Saudi share within Wipro has been growing significantly and is an identified region for investments for the organization.
 
Can you highlight the key markets where you operate and where you see the greatest opportunities for growth?

All the key focus markets — oil and gas, utilities, banking, telecom, health care, transportation and infrastructure — are doing well, expanding and continue to invest in their journey to differentiate their products/services/customer experience.

The leaders benchmark themselves with the best globally and this creates multiple opportunities for IT organizations. 

Given the large investments and plans of government to build infrastructure in the Kingdom across rail/air/cities etc., we are seeing high traction and a potential growth engine here in transportation and EPC industries.

Given the need to build up capacity/competence within the Kingdom, we also see large investments taking place in education sector, which will play a key role in ensuring the Kingdom’s sustained economic growth.
 
How many offices or operational centers you have in the Kingdom? Please answer this question with special reference to the development center Wipro has set up in Alkhobar.

Wipro has a Development Center in Riyadh and Alkhobar to support customers in Saudi Arabia as well as to nurture and develop local talent.

The Al Khobar Development Center is also SEI CMM Level 5 ver 1.3 certified and that makes us one of the very few in the Kingdom, which is adhering to high quality practices.

Apart from these development centers, we have sales and support offices in Riyadh, Jeddah and Alkhobar.
 
What is the total number of employees at Wipro in Saudi Arabia and how many of them are Saudi nationals? Is there any plan to further nationalize your work force and how many citizens will be employed by the company, say like, within the next five years?

Wipro has a committed localization policy with almost 38 percent of employees being Saudi nationals at present.

We are looking to increase employment opportunities for both men and women in the region by building competency in managerial and technical positions across business lines. 

This is a continuous process and we remain committed to Saudization and gender diversity.

We foresee that Saudi nationals will be a majority and dominant culture within Wipro Arabia. Recruitment, training and development of local talent is a continuous process.

I can tell you that the company will hire about 600 Saudi nationals within a few years from now in a staggered schedule.
 
What are your future plans in terms of tapping more business from this country and from the region, which is seeing billions of dollars of investments in the public sector, oil and gas, banking and telecom sectors?

IT has become an integral part of every business and, over the years, it is expected to solve many of the complex business issues.

Hence, IT will bring value to customers, and organizations like Wipro should not only have technical competence but also bring in domain understanding. 

Keeping this in mind, Wipro Arabia has created industry-wise structure, which allows us to focus deep domain challenges of customers and provided solutions to overcome those.

We also continue to invest in various new technologies/trends like mobility, data analytics, etc., which are very relevant in today’s and future context of business. 

We have also tightly integrated our industry practices to global teams, which enable Wipro Arabia to have access to global pool of skills and best practices, and hence customers are benefited through world-class delivery.

We also have a CTO function, which supports Wipro Arabia with thought leadership solutions....

We will continue to seek opportunities in investing locally into the Kingdom
 
Are you currently working with any project or initiative of the Saudi government, which is exerting all efforts to promote e-governance and e-government? 

Government is one of the key focus sectors for Wipro Arabia. We are currently engaged with few ministries in complex and transformational programs. Globally, we also have good expertise in e-governance programs and we will bring in some of our knowledge and experiences with more relevance to Saudi Arabia.

Wipro has been a leader in corporate responsibility. How critical is this to the culture of the company, and would you highlight some of Wipro’s initiatives in this regard, if any, in this country or the region?

As one of the strategic Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives to support the welfare of women and improve their employability skills, we have partnered with one of our customers on a self-development project for women of Saudi Arabia.

This will contribute significantly to the economic development of the country.

The objective was to empower women graduates with required IT and managerial competencies to improve their chances of selection and employment in IT roles.

Wipro devised an approach that provides Saudi young men and women, a comprehensive understanding of IT industry work requirements in the Kingdom and enable practical, “hands-on” experience with a fundamental and basic understanding of IT in order to perform broad range of IT roles.

The program was designed to include both IT skills and soft skills.

Two batches of students have successfully completed this course, which is of six months’ duration. During the course, students were exposed to industry expectations and best practices with “expert talks” by Wipro IT experts.

Another batch of students has been enrolled. Wipro has been engaged to conduct these training programs for a period of three years. 

Reports published recently in a section of the press said that Wipro is planning to restructure its India and Middle East businesses. What is your take on this?

The major restructuring that we did was that we organized ourselves vertically.

We have created a vertical structure for Wipro Infotech, the India and Middle East business of Wipro. The verticals — BFSI, health care and life sciences, telecom, RCT (retail, communication, transport), ENU (energy, natural resources and utilities) and government — have been aligned with the verticals in the global business.

This will help leverage domain capabilities and strengthen business process thereby augmenting our position.

What are your key priorities for Wipro for the coming year (2015) in order to retain your leadership position in the Saudi and the Middle East market as a whole?

Customer delight, bring in domain competence in identified industries, continue focus on localization, investments in new technologies/trends to enable our customers to differentiate themselves and be world class.

How do you compare the environment of business ethics and corporate best practices in this part of the world with other regions where Wipro has its presence? This question is being asked as Wipro has been named the 2014 World’s Most Ethical Company by the Ethisphere Institute.

We are happy to be recognized by Ethisphere for the third time in succession.

At Wipro, integrity and ethics have always been a core part of how we think and act.

Our constant endeavor is to keep raising the bar for ourselves and to do so collaboratively with our key stakeholders — employees, customers, suppliers, investors. 

The spirit of Wipro is the core of Wipro.

The spirit is rooted in current reality, but it also represents what Wipro aspires to be thus making it future active. The spirit is an indivisible synthesis of all three statements.

It means manifesting intensity to win, acting with sensitivity and being unyielding on integrity all the time.

How has Wipro used IT to build a strong foundation as you pursue excellence? Give a brief answer.

Wipro has used IT strategically to address the rapid scaling-up of the organization.

We use IT in all facets of our business and IT is a key enabler of our strategic objectives.

The success of all our major initiatives in excellence like Six Sigma, SEI-CMM and PCMM have depended heavily on corresponding automation programs.

Starting from Prospect Management right down to Accounting and Reporting, we have IT systems driving all our business processes. Going forward, our strategies for growth cannot succeed fully without the parallel scaling up of IT systems.