Azim Premji, CEO of Wipro, met with the Indian community on Saturday, Sep. 20 at the Wong Auditorium, MIT. The event was organized by Sangam, Sloan School of Management, MIT Business Club, Tech Link, South Asian Business Club and Asian Business Club. The auditorium was packed to capacity with standing room only.

Premji's talk focused on trends in global services, outsourcing and creating a world class organization. "The world is moving, large corporations and small groups are moving to find cost effective solutions. The trend is irreversible," said Premji. According to a study by McKinsey, for every $1 invested in outsourcing, the US companies get a return of $1.12 in various forms and it will only hurt the US economy further if the government tried to implement any barriers. He gave two examples of the automobile and the steel industries, which have gone through similar trends in the past. The auto industry, which has not received any subsidies from the government, still is #1 in the world and roughly employs the same number of people in the United States today as it did in 1974. One the other hand, the steel industry, which has received over $30B in subsidies and federal intervention, has seen a drop in steel production from 145MT to 99MT per year, significant drop in the number of people employed in the industry, and a situation where none of the US companies are now in the top 10 in the world.

Part of his mission for the talk, was to build a brand name for Wipro. Wipro is currently the #1 IT company in India with about $1B in revenue and $6B market cap. It has about 24,000 employees worldwide from 14 nationalities with 5,500 of them being engineers. As quality is the #1 objective for all its employees, 6,500+ employees are trained in six-sigma with 150 certified black belts and is currently working on 700+ six-sigma projects. With an average age of 28 years and a workforce in which 40% of the employees have less than 2 years experience, it has facilities to train 1200 people/day and an additional 1800 using e-learning.

In order to compete in the future, every company must focus, practice and be non-negotiable on its core values. At Wipro, these are: Human values, Integrity, Innovative solutions and Value for money. It has a growing range of services for the government and the retail, financial service, insurance, media and publishing, energy and utilities, manufacturing and travel industries. Recently it acquired two companies: AMS and Nervewire.

Most of the time was spent as a Q and A session. In a unique twist, Premji first entertained questions only from the women in the audience before he took questions from men. He sympathized with the job losses in the IT sector here, but expected the pains to continue for the next 3-5 years. He discussed the double standards of US multinationals, where companies such as Wal-Mart want to enter the Indian market and displace the lively hood to thousands of family-owned retail businesses. In the area of IP, Premji felt that most multinationals around the world have more faith in Indian companies and Indian law about protecting IP than China. Premji strongly believes that technology is the only sector which leads to real job opportunities and economic growth. Even though other fields of study are important, they are not the driving force for the economy.

It was a pleasure to listen to Azim Premji, who was very straight forward with his answers and believed in every word he said. On his personal efforts, he is committed to improving the primary education in India, as he believes that not only will that lead to increased literacy and economic growth but also lower birth rates and population control in the future.

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