Q1FY12 may not reflect our revenue growth: Wipro

Indian software services provider Wipro's fourth quarter (January-March) net profit rose 4.3% to Rs 1,375 crore, quarter-on-quarter. Calling the flattish set of numbers "a quarter aberration", chief executive officer of the IT business and executive director TK Kurien said the demand scenario has changed from the past and we will now be focussing on shaping demand rather than reacting to it. "By doing that, what you get is going to be more consulting and more architecture-based rather than just delivery based. So there is a fairly big shift that is happening out there."

"The growth rate in momentum verticals remains strong. And, the initiatives with respect to client mining are falling into place," executive director and chief financial officer Suresh Senapaty told CNBC-TV18 in an exclusive interview.

Indicating pressure on next quarter margins, Kurien said, "Revenue growth will be back-ended. We will see revenues down the year, not in Q1, which has been traditionally muted compared to Q4 for us."

The country's third-largest software services exporter plans to hike wages by 12-15% in offshore and 2-4% in onsite. This will be reflected from June 1, 2011, and will thus, impact our margins for the month, Senapaty added.

However, in the medium- to long-term, the margins are sustainable with positive bias, Senapaty said. "We expect the integration with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to be consummated in the first quarter."

Uncomfortable with the high level of attrition, corporate vice president of the human resources division Pratik Kumar said it will take another two to three quarters before attrition eases. However, he was quick to add voluntary attrition during the quarter dropped to 20.9% from 21.7% (QoQ).

The hiring scenario seems fairly decent to Kumar. "We have a reasonably high utilization level. If you exclude trainees, our net utilization is hovering closer to about 80%. Almost 70% of our total hiring for the year is going to be of freshers, which will be a mix of engineers and science graduates," he said.

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