IT services company Wipro Technologiesexpects its next acquisition to be in the region of £500m
as it continues its aggressive global growth strategy and aims to
reach a target of £5bn annual turnover by 2010.
Kees Ten Nijenhuis, senior vice-president at Wipro told Computer
Weekly that the company was "actively looking" for new acquisitions
as part of its "string of pearls" acquisition strategy to achieve a
comprehensive portfolio of offerings.
He said the company would continue to add to the eight
successively larger acquisitions it had made in the past five years
as one of its main strategies for growth.
The company's other strategies include the organic growth of
existing services and expansion through partnerships and
alliances.
"An acquisition around the £500m mark would be the next step up
from our most
recent acquisition of Infocrossing in 2007 for £300m," said Ten
Nijenhuis.
He said growth by acquisition was important to Wipro because it
enabled rapid access to customers, domain knowledge and a larger
territorial footprint to widen channels to market, which would
otherwise take much longer to achieve.
"The Indian technically-skilled labour market is also heating up
with competition to the IT industry from the telecommunication and
other industries, so Wipro is reducing its dependency on that
skills pool by recruiting in countries like Brazil, Mexico and even
the US," said Ten Nijenhuis.
In the UK, he said Wipro was concentrating on working with MBA
programmes at several universities to recruit local talent to
bolster local expertise and support "solid growth" in a market Ten
Nijenhuis said was very "open" to new technologies.
In the rest of Europe, Wipro was aiming mainly at acquiring
companies that provided niche service lines such SAP support.