Azim Premji’s flagship firm on Saturday announced the resignation of its CEO Thierry Delaporte just days ahead of its full year financial results. He had another 15 months of his tenure as CEO remaining.
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Pallia, 56, a Wipro veteran of 30 years and CEO of its largest and fastest growth market Americas 1, took charge of the company on Sunday.
The retirement age at Wipro is 58, but Pallia will continue to be CEO for five years. He will be 61 years old at the end of his tenure.
Pallia is one of the rare candidates to rise up the ranks to the top within Wipro, which has seen several CEO changes in the last 15 years. Some quick to-dos as he takes charge, experts said, are to boost the morale of the employees of the country’s fourth largest IT services and consultancy firm and reverse senior level attrition.
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Pallia will need to get back Wipro’s mojo to become a sought-after employer once again, they said. “He will also need to bring large deals to move the needle in performance like Wipro’s large peers and also focus on more client mining to increase $100-million-plus accounts,” said Pareekh Jain, CEO and lead analyst of information platform EIIRTrend. Industry experts said that while the board of Wipro considered several external candidates to replace Delaporte, company chairman Rishad Premji has opted for a popular internal candidate based in New Jersey, the heartland of IT services decision making.
Pallia has the respect within the internal circles and “is also liked by key partners Microsoft and SAP”, said Phil Fersht, CEO of HFS Research, an IT focused research firm, adding, “He knows the company…he knows many of the key clients, especially ones like Este and Tapestry he personally won for Wipro.” Fersht said Pallia should “break down the fiefdoms” at Wipro. “This is where Thierry struggled, and Srini can succeed by ensuring they go after new clients as one Wipro team, not a broken group of silos,” he said.
He added that large acquisitions like Capco need to be fixed. “It makes no sense to keep these entities so separate with separate brands. It’s not too late to reverse this, especially with financial services over the worst of its difficult times,” Fersht said.
Most industry experts saw Delaporte’s exit coming. “Delaporte rarely left his Paris base, while his CEO counterparts have been regularly rallying the troops across India and the US,” a person close to Wipro said on condition of anonymity.
“Despite the CEO being in Europe, Wipro struggled to win the deals in the region as compared to its larger rivals TCS and Infosys,” the person told ET.
According to most industry analysts, the morale has been sapped out of the $2.66-billion Bengaluru-based company for a year now, and this change in leadership is at least six months overdue. Growth continued to be a struggle for Wipro over the past many quarters. In the third quarter ended December 2023, the company reported its fourth consecutive quarterly fall in net profit that dipped 12% year on year to Rs 2,694 crore.
It also slashed its revenue growth guidance at both the lower and upper end to -1.5%-0.5%. In the previous quarter, it had trimmed the revenue guidance to -3.5% to -1.5%.
Delaporte’s large deals team, spearheaded by Stephanie Trautman, struggled and was shut down at the end of last year with Trautman, a former Accenture executive and a popular figure with clients, leaving the firm.
Experts said Delaporte, who will stay on until May end to help the transition, had brought in many executives from outside of Wipro and neglected loyal Wiproites who had built the company. This resulted in many key executives leaving the firm, including chief operations officer Sanjeev Singh, India head Satya Easwaran, and iDEAS business head Rajan Kohli.
Most notably, Wipro lost its well-respected CFO Jatin Dalal to Cognizant. Wipro even filed a lawsuit against Dalal and former healthcare vertical head Mohd Haque for alleged violation of employment contract. Dalal’s case is currently under arbitration.
“Simply put, the firm is bleeding talent and morale has never been lower,” Fersht said. “He (Pallia) needs to nail down his plans quickly, give the firm renewed direction, and convince key stakeholders he is the right choice during perhaps the darkest period in Wipro’s history.”
Pallia needs to retain key leaders, Fersht said. “He needs to pull together and ensure they stay.” Pallia joined Wipro in 1992. He holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering and a master’s in management studies from Indian Institute of Science Bangalore.
