Wipro executive chairman Rishad Premji said the IT services company is on the right track under CEO Srinivas Pallia, expressing confidence in the strategy and the direction the firm is taking as it invests in artificial intelligence (AI) and talent transformation.
“I’m pleased with the way Pallia is settling down. I’m excited about what we’re doing and I think we’re doing the right things to take us forward,” Premji told Moneycontrol at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos on January 21.
Pallia, a 30-year Wipro veteran, was appointed CEO and MD on April 7, 2024 after Thierry Delaporte resigned his position a year before the end of his term.
The annual WEF, which brought together nearly 3,000 leaders, including 400 political leaders and 850 CEOs, from across the world, ends on January 23.
Client environment uncertain but steady
Customers are continuing to make decisions despite heightened geopolitical uncertainty. “Certainly, the uncertainty around geopolitics is high. There’s been an uncertainty element for a while now, but maybe it’s heightened,” Premji said. “I find most customers are thinking more long-term and navigating, but with caution, as they move forward.”
The company has not seen customers stop spending entirely due to uncertainty. “We haven’t had conversations with customers that suggest that, 'hey, look, I’m fundamentally stopping something or holding something back given the uncertainty', 'but I’m being very prudent, yet actioning and moving forward',” Premji said.
Premji said Wipro’s focus remains on moving quickly and adapting to shifting enterprise priorities. “So the ability to sort of navigate and pivot and change path is required, but they’re moving forward in my sense,” he said.
Opportunity for services companies
Premji said AI will create wider opportunities for technology services firms, from advisory work to implementation and delivery at scale.
“And so that creates huge opportunities actually for services companies, all the way from helping a customer in terms of advising them on their journey of AI, helping them actually curate data, helping them leverage the curated data to fine-tune the models, helping them identify the use cases,” he said.
Premji added that Wipro has been building and leveraging its own platforms to build use cases, to fine-tune the models, to build out AI agents, to orchestrate, and to deliver those continuously.
Wipro investing in AI offerings, talent
Premji said Wipro is stepping up investments in AI and employee reskilling, as it looks to stay ahead of changing client needs.
Wipro is working to infuse AI into everything it does. “Everything we do today, we’re infusing this. We’re investing in it tremendously,” Premji said.
Premji also stated that Wipro is focusing on capability building across its workforce. “We’re investing tremendously in reskilling our talent,” he said.
Commercial models, hiring could evolve
Premji said AI could reshape how technology services companies price their work, moving beyond purely people-based models. “The linearity could change because I think the expectation of what the commercial models can look like could look different,” he said.
“I think there will be more and more outcome-based models,” Premji said, adding there will be “more and more value-creation models as opposed to purely time and material and people-based models.”
Premji said companies may not recruit at earlier scales, but will continue to hire while repurposing talent. “I don’t know whether we will hire at the scale that we used to in the past. It doesn’t mean we will not hire,” he said. “It will also mean a huge amount of repurposing of the talent you have.”
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