After Infosys, now Wipro hires a Capgemini top executive as CEO & MD

Appoints French IT services firm's COO Thierry Delaporte for its top post

Capgemini’s top executive Thierry Delaporte is all set to be the next chief executive officer and managing director of Wipro from July 6. He will be the first foreign national to lead the Bengaluru-headquartered firm since its inception. It will also be the first instance of a top five Indian IT services firm onboarding a foreign national for driving growth.

Incidentally, two of the leading Bengaluru-headquartered IT firms — Wipro and Infosys — will now have CEOs and MDs who were working with French IT services major Capgemini in leadership roles. Salil Parekh, the CEO and MD at Infosys, was a member of the Group Executive Board at Capgemini, before joining his current role.

Delaporte’s appointment is critical for Wipro as it comes at a time when the firm continues to lag its peers in driving top line growth in the past years. In the past decade (FY10-FY20), Wipro has grown its revenues by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.5 per cent, against 13.3 per cent CAGR for Tata Consultancy Services and 10.3 per cent for Infosys, according to consultancy firm EIIR Trends. The Azim Premji-promoted firm posted 1.7 per cent growth in its revenues from IT segment at $8.256 billion in the last financial year. “Wipro’s new CEO should focus on client mining and acquisitions to enable the firm to grow at double digit,” said Pareekh Jain, IT outsourcing advisor and founder of Pareekh Consulting.

Over the past years, Wipro has taken several steps to realign its business operations for driving faster growth under the incumbent CEO. It has restructured its West Asia business, apart from carving out a unit for state-run public sector undertakings and government organisations from enterprise business. The firm has also divested its low margin data centre business as part of its portfolio restructuring initiatives.

Despite all these measures, some client-specific issues and demand slowdown in specific segments such as infrastructure management services (IMS) impacted the growth numbers of the IT firm in previous years.

Experts are of the opinion that Delaporte as CEO will help Wipro win large deals and strengthen the critical BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) segment. During his 24 years career with Capgemini, he held several leadership roles, including that of CEO of the global financial services strategic business unit and head of all global service lines.

In FY20, BFSI vertical contributed 31 per cent to Wipro’s IT services revenues and grew 4 per cent in constant currency term over the previous financial year. “Under his leadership, Wipro is likely to focus more on consulting side of business and strengthening its European operations,” said Jain.

His experience in overseeing Capgemini’s India operations — one of the largest delivery centres of the company — is likely to put him in good stead in managing the operations of Wipro. However, analysts said the new CEO has to accelerate growth prospects of the company to close the gap in valuation with its peers.