Wipro is looking to enhance cloud-based services, says Rishad Premji

Rishad Premji, Executive Chairman of IT services giant Wipro, on Tuesday said his company will increasingly focus on cloud-based services.

Speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum's annual summit in Davos, Premji told CNBC-TV18, “There is a huge, huge journey and transformation to cloud, there is a huge journey of transformation and how (to) leverage data more impactfully and smartly."

Premji said the company would want to spend more time on building capabilities around cloud and around data. "We would certainly look at perhaps enhancing our capabilities in specific markets, whether they be markets like the Nordic region or other parts of Europe. So we will continue to look at things that make strategic sense,” Premji told CNBC-TV18's Shereen Bhan.

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Premji added that Wipro is focusing obsessively on a couple of things. "One, how do we drive deep strategic partnerships that will help us grow our business? Sixty percent of our revenue comes from partners; how do we really build and scale that disruptively? So our focus is on strengthening partnerships all the way from the hyperscalers to many, many of the SaaS companies and the infrastructure companies. Two, how do we focus on large deals? We didn't have a very strategic focus on large deals before, I think we have strengthened that over the last couple of years as well,” he added.

Premji further said the world is stuck in a place where the environment is uncertain, but demand is robust. “I have been meeting a whole bunch of different people — customers, economists, private equity folks — everybody (is) terribly, terribly worried ...COVID is not over yet, the war (has made things) uncertain, commodity prices are rising, inflation is at an all-time high. So people are incredibly worried. The environment is uncertain. People don't know where things are going to be six months from now, and yet when you ask them how their businesses are doing, they are actually doing pretty well.”

He added, “I still see buoyancy in the demand environment, I still see the challenge being supply-led for the tech industry at the moment. So I feel quite optimistic as I look out over the next three to five years. The next couple of quarters could potentially be bumpy."