Wipro gets Amit Choudhary for revived COO rank
2 min read 19 Oct 2022, 11:49 PM ISTWipro’s operating margin was 15.1% at the end of the September quarter, having shrunk 410 basis points from 19.2% at the end of June 2020
PremiumWipro Ltd has appointed former Capgemini executive Amit Choudhary as chief operating officer, reviving a role that it dispensed with nearly 16 months ago.
The development comes at a time chief executive officer Thierry Delaporte, himself a former Capgemini executive, appears to have run into challenges in turning around the Bengaluru-based company that he joined in July 2020.
In July 2021, Wipro’s chief operating officer Bhanumurty B.M. retired, after which the country’s fourth largest technology services company decided to do away with having a second-in-command to Delaporte. Instead, it created a new position of chief operations officer. This was because of the new organizational structure put in place starting January last year.
Under this structure, four leaders are entrusted with managing sales teams covering multiple industries across the globe, while two executives manage the back-end or delivery side of the business.
Choudhary, who was the COO of the Financial Services Business at French IT firm Capgemini, joined Wipro last week, and will be based out of New York, an executive familiar with the development said.
“Wipro can confirm the appointment of Amit Choudhary as Chief Operating Officer and a member of Wipro’s Executive Board (WEB)," said a spokesperson for Wipro. “Amit and Sanjeev (Sanjeev Singh, chief operations officer) will work closely to enable a seamless transition before Sanjeev moves on to his next assignment." Wipro’s Executive Board comprises 11 executives.
Mint had reported in its 20 September edition that Choudhary was expected to join Wipro.
After steering Wipro to a post a 27.3% dollar revenue growth in the year ended March 2022, Delaporte is now battling to build a stable leadership team amid concerns of declining profitability and sputtering growth.
Over the last two months, five senior executives have left, including Angan Guha, who as CEO of Americas 2 Strategic Market Unit was overseeing a third of Wipro’s total business.
Wipro’s operating margin was 15.1% at the end of the September quarter, having shrunk 410 basis points from 19.2% at the end of June 2020.
The company reported tepid second-quarter earnings last week missing analysts’ estimates of both revenue and profitability. Two consecutive quarters of soft growth and the firm estimating an at-best sequential growth of 2% in constant currency terms in the current quarter imply that Wipro will find it challenging to end the year with a 10% growth. Wipro’s larger rivals, including Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Infosys Ltd and HCL Technologies maintain they will post double-digit growth in the current financial year.
Wipro shares had touched a new high of ₹721.5 apiece on 4 January 2022. Since then, the stock has tumbled 48% compared to the 0.7% decline of the NSE 50.
