4. Services Grow: Revenues Fall

Wipro Infotech, the hardware and solutions arm of Wipro Ltd, recorded a downfall of 31 percent in its agency business during 2001-02. This was probably one of the toughest years for the company in terms of revenue which recorded a turnover of Rs 440 crore in 2001-02 as Rs 642 crore the previous fiscal. Despite this, the company held on to its DQCI Silver Club ranking of #4.

Some good news came from domestic hardware services, which grew by 15 percent to bring in Rs 178 crore. Last year Wipro was also awarded the Best Service Sales Partner in South Asia by Sun Microsystems.

As a remedy to ailing market conditions, new partner profitability programs were rolled out in 2001-02. P Anirudh, Head-Product Sales Division says, "Our programs are aimed at identifying and motivating enthusiastic, committed and charged partners who could grow their business by turbo-charging Wipro's growth in the domestic market."

According to Rajib Ghosh, Channel Sales Manager, the company's channels have gained ground among corporates and governments. Plans are now afoot to expand into territories where Wipro Infotech was under-represented. However, the growth would primarily come from government, SME, SOHO and service markets. This is why the company intends increasing its focus on these segments.

The strong network of 275 business partners contributed to over 60 percent of the total desktop sales of Wipro Infotech last year. They not only handled desktops but also the Sun range of servers, networking products, Wipro-branded servers and notebooks and software products.

MEASURES THAT BROUGHT MOOLAH: Introduced key products primarily for SMEs Rolled out partner profitability programs to beat

Wipro Infotech has embarked on a mission to enhance its reach in smaller towns and cities by adopting a two-tier distribution model. By virtue of this model, it would appoint local distributors who would carry its products to small and medium

corporates through their associates. In line with this strategy, the company appointed Sogo Computers as its local distributor

for Karnataka.

The company also introduced some new key products primarily for the fast growing SME segment. In addition to this, Wipro built a strong professional services partnership with its principals and got itself certified as an ISO 9001 integrator.