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Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nandu who wrote (3348)	12/5/1998 11:32:00 AM
From: Mohan Marette	Respond to of 12475

What's cooking at WIPRO (India). Anil: Thanks for that article on 'Fire' nice to hear people of Kerala still keeps an open mind and receptive to opinions and ideas though controversial. Here is an article about Wipro from Forbes if you are interested. ========================================================== In progressing from cooking oil to computers, Wipro both exemplifies and leads India's march to modernity. What's cooking at Wipro? By Subrata N. Chakravarty THREE DECADES AGO Azim Hasham Premji, now 53, abandoned his engineering studies at Stanford two quarters short of graduation. His father had died, and the younger Premji had to return to run the family business. His father's company processed one of the most ancient of products: cooking oil. The new Wipro is one of India's leading technology companies. The Mumbai (Bombay) Stock Exchange's Sensex index dropped 20% between April and July, but Wipro's market cap doubled, peaking at $2.1 billion. Controlling 75% of the stock, Premji is one of India's genuine billionaires. Wipro's cooking oil business remains, and so do several other basic consumer product lines; but the real glamour in Wipro's revenues ($430 million in revenues in the latest fiscal year) are computers and software. Premji's first task on returning home was to modernize the oil business. "We were the pioneers in packaging for the mass market," says Premji. "A customer would go to a retail shop and ask for 50 grams, 100 grams of vanaspati [solidified fat]. The retailer would scoop it up from an open box—in which there were crawling mosquitoes and flies—and put it in a plastic container. We went from bulk packs of vanaspati to [single-use-size] consumer packs." That worked; but after studying at Stanford, Premji wasn't going to be satisfied with cooking oil. In 1980 Wipro began building minicomputers with technology licensed from Sentinel Computer Corp., U.S.A. To gain credibility, Premji stressed service. Wipro sold directly to corporate customers and provided aftersale service directly. When its name and brand were established, Wipro began selling through a dealer network and began assembling products made by such well-known companies as Canon, Cisco Systems, Epson, Hewlett-Packard and Sun. It also distributed software from Adobe, Borland and Netscape, and began designing and manufacturing peripherals, like dot matrix printers. Early in the PC era—in 1985—Wipro allied with Acer, the Taiwanese PC-maker. "Our [PC] the first 18 months was largely an Acer kit," says Ashok Soota, group president of Wipro Infotech. Wipro and Acer parted company for a while and Wipro produced its own machines, but they teamed up again in 1991. Wipro owns 55% of the joint venture. It's no great trick to assemble computers in India, and local products, being much cheaper, have 75% of the market in units. But multinational brands like IBM, Compaq and Acer command a 50% price premium, which is why it decided it needed a foreign partner again. Wipro-Acer now has an 8% market share. But in order to compete in the local product segment, a Wipro-branded computer has been reintroduced in the nonpremium market. More recently Soota, taking advantage of India's huge pool of educated English-speakers, has added network and facilities management services. Thus, for example, a customer with a problem might call a help number and never know that the call has been beamed to India for resolution. Wipro had been writing software since getting into the computer business. "We knew we could become a world player in software," Soota says. Because software is labor-intensive, India has a huge advantage in that a good engineer who might fetch $60,000 per year in the U.S. is happy to earn $10,000 in India. Wipro began doing custom projects for customers, much of it for export. Last fiscal year Wipro's software exports exceeded $103 million. "We're growing literally as fast as we can based on the availability of skilled and trained manpower," says Soota. Now Wipro is beginning to concentrate on what Premji calls "domain skills." Among the "domains" on which Wipro is concentrating for export—especially to the U.S.—are health care, telecommunications, enterprise resource planning and data communications. Premji takes understandable pride in Wipro's joint venture with GE Medical Systems Ltd. in the manufacture of medical hardware like CAT scanners, X-ray and ultrasound machines . Wipro-GE Medical Systems is a truly high-tech operation. It builds and designs low-end ultrasound machines for export to poorer countries that cannot afford the more expensive machines. It writes software for GE's U.S.-made CAT scan and MRI equipment. India can count itself lucky that Premji returned home rather than building his career in Silicon Valley. forbes.com

To: Nandu who wrote (3348)	12/8/1998 12:54:00 PM
From: Mohan Marette	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12475

The Milkman of India-Dr. Verghese Kurien Anil: Here is someone from our neck of the woods who made good-Dr.Kurien of Milma fame. ============================================================= White Revolution, sepia memories: Diary of a dairy don Like other young and ambitious men of his times, he, too, wanted to join the glamour world of Bombay but, thanks to a timely advice from a down-to-earth man, he ended up in a dusty town of Gujarat to emerge as the unassailable father of India's white revolution. Reminiscing the success story of Anand Milk Union Limited (AMUL) five decades after its creation, Dr Verghese Kurien, who recently retired as chairman of National Dairy Development Board, told the graduates of National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, that like other young men of his time, he wanted to take his destined place among the captains of commerce and industry. "By my good fortune, though, I came to know a man, Tribhuvandas Patel, who was wise and caring. Although he could most likely have achieved a greater standing, he found his happiness in life by serving the dairy farmers of Kheda district. ''That happiness was infectious and I caught it. Fifty years later, I have never left Anand and have no desire to leave. Moreover, there is not a moment there that I regret," he added. He was honoured with the Padma Bhushan and the Ramon Magasaysay Award for Community Development and numerous other awards. The 77-year-old "Milkman of India", as he is affectionately called, told young graduates of the NID at its 19th convocation function that if one, just one, of them would take his advice seriously, his mission would be fulfilled. He gave ten tips for success : 1) do things on a large scale, large enough that you cannot admit to the possibility of failure; 2) ensure that you possess the relevant experience and skills; 3) call on others when you need them, but on your own terms; 4) be clear in what you seek to achieve; 5) know your market and what it needs -- not what you think it needs; 6) listen -- carefully -- to your consumers; 7) respect your consumers; 8) never compromise on quality; 9) ensure that you and those you work with are committed to your purpose, ensure that they are young and enrgetic; and 10) remember, always, that honesty is the only policy -- it will give you enormous strength, and endow all your works with humility, and listen to the voice of wisdom from whatever quarter it appears. UNI rediff.com