Speaking to shareholders in the virtual meeting, Premji said, “We pride ourselves that we have been an entrepreneurial company through our history. We have bred many many CEOs who have gone out to build organisations. The reality is sometimes people have opportunities that give them a bigger leap in their career, so people leave for those opportunities.”
“…we empower people when they are young, we give opportunities to grow when they are young, and we think we have created enough opportunities to be highly decentralised and highly empowered leaders joining their businesses. Entrepreneurial spirit is the secret sauce of Wipro and that continues,” he added.
Joining ranks, independent director Deepak Satwalekar added that the leadership and strategic processes are done not just at the board level but through the various board committees.
“One of the more important areas we focus, and cover is succession planning. We are happy to say this year, the processes have gone smoothly because we have had a smooth transition at the CEO and the CFO level. The other focus is on which lines of businesses, which geographies in the world is what we would look at. All of this is keeping in mind the risks involved in all of these areas. The risk factors are taken in detail,” he said.
The new chief executive officer and managing director (CEO & MD) Srini Pallia also said, “The executive board supports me and also the Wipro executive team, we are all together, united to drive the growth back, especially the profitable growth Wipro is looking for.”
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Pallia reiterated his five point strategic priorities including large deals, building stronger relationship with clients and talent at scale, which he laid out in the annual and fourth quarter results in April just days after taking charge following former CEO Thierry Delaporte’s exit. Besides taking questions on bonus, GenAI and employees at the AGM, Premji said that despite subdued discretionary spending in the first half, Wipro saw green shoots in its consulting business in the second half of the fiscal year 2024, a positive early indicator.
According to Pallia, Wipro’s focus for FY25 would be to focus on AI-powered industry-specific offerings and consulting-led business solutions; build talent at scale around industry solutions with an AI-first approach.
On a question about GenAI and its impact on coding, Pallia said that the productivity increases in software development cycle and in managed services as they continue to implement more and more GenAI tools.
“We will have a combination of both GenAI and data impacting us. In the mid-to-long term, GenAI will be actually a net positive opportunity for a company like Wipro and we want to build on those capabilities and thereby enhance market share within the business,” Pallia further said.
