Vakrangee to set up two hubs in Kolkata and Chennai      
June 07, 2008
Source:  PTI

MUMBAI: Digitalisation, data and printing management solutions provider Vakrangee Softwares today said it will invest Rs 50 crore to set up two more regional hubs in Kolkata and Chennai and induct 1,000 people in these stations. 

The company, which has regional hubs in Mumbai and Delhi at present, intends to cover the entire country with setting up of the two proposed regional hubs. 

"We are currently looking for a suitable land in Chennai and Kolkata to set up these hubs. We will invest Rs 50 crore to put up these facilities," Vakarangee Softwares' Chairman and Managing Director Dinesh Nandwana told reporters here. 

Vakrangee Softwares claims to be one of the pioneers in the country in digitalisation, data and printing management solutions business. 

Nandwana said that regional hubs in Kolkata and Chennai would employ 500 persons each and work on the projects would start in the next quarter. The current strength of the company is 1,500. 

"By the end of the current fiscal, both these hubs would be operational," he said. 

Vakrangee Softwares has already committed an investment of Rs 200 crore during the current fiscal to expand its operations. Apart from the proposed two hubs, the company would also set up its centralised office in Karjat and already bought 275 acres of land for that. 

The firm, which had recorded a net profit of Rs 49.87 crore on Rs 223.8 crore sales in the last fiscal, aims both topline and bottomline growth by 50 per cent in the next three years, he said. 

PE firm Zephyr invests in Miles Software     
June 07 , 2008 
SOURCE: TNN

MUMBAI: New York-based PE firm Zephyr Peacock, which has around $1 billion under management globally, has invested in Miles Software, an IT company providing solutions to the financial services sector. The details of the investment were not known. Zephyr’s India MD Mukul Gulati said the private equity firm was bullish on financial services and education in India. 

“We believe the current downturn in the financial services is temporary. In long run, we are very bullish on the prospects for financial services in India,” said Mr Gulati. The firm is raising an India-dedicated fund from which most of its investments will be made. 

Unlike majority of overseas funds that are technology-focussed, Zephyr’s areas of interest in the country are financial services and education. “Our investment in Miles is primarily a financial services investment with a technology component. We don’t view it as an IT investment,” added Mr Gulati. Miles is a Mumbai-based products firm with solutions in wealth management and related areas.

Wipro restructures top leadership to spur growth     
June 07, 2008 
SOURCE: TNN

BANGALORE: Following the appointment of Suresh Vaswani and Girish Paranjpe as joint CEOs, Wipro has undertaken a significant leadership restructuring and pan-global geographic re-grouping. The company has bunched its geographies into five and identified five chief executives to head each of these regions. 

Rajat Mathur, who currently heads the software solutions division, has been appointed as chief executive of Asia Pacific markets. Ayan Mukherjee, formerly senior VP (telecom & product engineering) in the US, will now be chief executive for Europe, based in London. 

The US markets will now be looked after by Manoj Punja, formerly senior VP (technology, media and transport). As a combined geography, Japan and China will be headed by chief executive, Hiroshi Alley, while Anand Sankaran, formerly global head (outsourcing), has been appointed as chief executive for India and Middle East, including Saudi Arabia. 

Mathur, Mukherjee, Punja and Alley will report to Anne Rochelle Smith, Wipro’s new president (global operations) who would be based in its New Jersey office. Smith, former head of CapGemini’s America operation, is expected to come on the board of Wipro by mid June. 

However, Sankaran will report to Suresh Vaswani. Post restructuring, India and Middle East will be a single block, while the rest of Asia Pac will move to Wipro Technologies. Wipro has widened its Asean presence by including newer markets like Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines on its radar, apart from existing regions like Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Hong Kong. 

Earlier, the entire Asia Pac/Asean region was part of Wipro Infotech while Japan was under Wipro Technologies, along with north America (including Canada) and Europe, headed by P R Chandrasekhar, who recently quit Wipro. For the external world, there will only be one company, Wipro Ltd. Wipro Technologies and Wipro Infotech will cease to exit. 

The geographic restructuring will also change the revenue reporting structure of Wipro. Now on, the company will report consolidated revenues across geographies for products and services while earning numbers of consumer care & lighting (headed by Vineet Agrawal) and hydraulic and the newly started renewable energy businesses (headed by Anurag Behar) will be announced separately. 

“The objective of the restructuring is to streamline our operations globally. We will be able to find more value in the market by splitting it into specific regions,’’ said a Wipro official. 

Team Wipro has a single mandate today - to be among the top 10 tech firm in the world in the next three years. Services currently accounts for 95% of Wipro’s revenues while there is significant traction happening in platform reselling, licensed reselling and systems integration with Sun Microsystems, Cisco, EMC, HP and IBM, SAP, Oracle and Microsoft being key partners. With the oil market bullish, companies in the Middle East have been increasing their IT spend, and hence the region is getting increased attention.