Wipro eyeing acquisitions, govt projects for growth

Against the backdrop of a spate of recent acquisitions by international technology companies like Dell and Xerox, Indian IT major Wipro on Friday said it is looking at acquisitions to fuel growth.

"We are selectively looking at acquisitions...it will be a string of smaller ones," Wipro Chairman Azim Premji told reporters on the sidelines of a conference here.

He, however, declined to divulge further details saying, "It is premature to talk of them."

Premji said Wipro is focusing on the domestic sector, which accounts for just about 5 per cent of its Rs 6,274 crore revenues for the quarter ended June 30, 2009. About a quarter of domestic sales comes from government projects.

"We are very active in the (government) space and chasing many deals... About 20-25 per cent of our Indian revenues come from the government sector," Premji said.

On the signs of recovery in the IT market, which was hit by the global economic meltdown, Premji said, "I think there is stabilisation in the market."

Wipro Infotech has already bagged the e-health contract of the Indian Navy to upgrade technology in the hospital patient administration wing into an integrated hospital information system. “We see a huge opportunity in government hospitals, especially in rural areas. Wipro HCIT (health care IT) is growing at 100% y-o-y . Over 100 installations have been completed so far,” Wipro Infotech healthcare IT general manager Harbir Singh Sawhney has said. The task they had taken up involved creating various databases and linking them via internet.

“We are developing new products based on cutting-edge technology, which will be Web-enabled , have multiple databases and have radio-frequency identification (RFID),” he said.