Wipro: Creating a culture of collaboration
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Wipro: Fostering open innovation in financial services WRIT TEN BY
BEN MOUNCER PRODUCED BY
TOM VENTURO
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Mahesh Raja, Vice President, Financial Services — Americas, Wipro Limited, outlines the technology powerhouse’s plan to develop a futureproof ecosystem for the financial sector
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dapting long-held business models to the irrepressible forces of change is, right now, the critical challenge facing our most
prestigious financial institutions. Never before has the established order had to contend with such genuine threats to its dominance. While undoubt04
edly a priority for leaders across industries, the next stage of evolution for the financial sector is especially unpredictable as a system, impenetrable for so long, opens up slowly to different methods, ideas and thinking. Technology has been the catalyst for that change. Decision-makers have no choice but to find answers to questions such as ‘how can we use advanced AI and machine learning to predict the future?’, ‘should we move our entire systems to the cloud?’ and ‘what is in place to shield our information from cyberattacks?’. Implementing transformative tools within business structures that have grown over decades is a slow process, however – and this is why start-ups, challengers and fin-tech, free from historical baggage and practices, have been able to steal a march on their once-uncatchable rivals.
CLICK TO WATCH : ‘WIPRO-MAHESH RAJA, VICE PRESIDENT, FINANCIAL SERVICES, AMERICAS, WIPRO (INFOGRAPHIC)’ 05 Mahesh Raja, Vice President, Financial Services, Americas, Wipro Limited is leading a small group aiming to bridge the gap between the United States’ most recognized entities and the disruptive outsiders offering alternatives to the status quo. He believes that, through the development of Wipro’s ‘New-Age Financial Services’ ecosystem, the building blocks are in place to forge the industry’s future.
WIPRO’S FOOTPRINT IN FINANCIAL SERVICES Wipro is one of the foremost technology service providers the world over. w w w.wi p ro. com
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A significant influence with fingerprints on just about every industry, it is a global leader in the fields of IT, consultancy and the changing of business processes through the use of advanced and emerging technologies. The company generates approximately $8bn of revenue annually, with 30% of this figure earned in the financial services sector, encompassing not only the banking world but also insurance and capital markets. Wipro’s Americas region – covering
“ The traditional banks and financial institutions are getting disrupted by new-age platform companies, whether they like it or not” — Mahesh Raja, Vice President, Financial Services, Americas, Wipro Limited
the United States, Canada and Latin
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America – is its core market for financial services, bringing in a significant portion
E X E C U T I V E P R OF IL E
Mahesh Raja Mahesh is Wipro Limited’s Banking & FS industry leader supporting top-tier full service banks, large payment/ fintech clients across US, Canada and LATAM with P&L responsibility. He also leads Wipro’s Digital, fintech /New Age ecosystem which includes developing partnerships with leading fintech players, helping clients assess the fintech ecosystem and potential implications to their business, and bringing solutions to clients through alliances and implementation.
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HE W L E T T PA CK A R D E N T E R P R IS E — W IP R O S N A P S HO T
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At Wipro, strategic partnerships are one of the core pillars of our business strategy. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Wipro have been working together for 20+ years, delivering the best in class solutions around hybrid IT, data center consolidation, legacy system modernization, and software-defined DC. Wipro’s BoundaryLess DataCenter™ (BLDC) framework, integrated with HPE’s Hybrid IT solutions, offers Cloud services that are responsive to dynamic workloads, drive outcome based financial management and enable agility and scale. These services are integrated and delivered through Wipro ServiceNXT™, our managed services framework. Today, the two companies are capitalizing on their progressive, forward-looking view of technology to help provide new age business solutions across blockchain, edge computing, cognitive and more. Wipro and HPE are
creating blockchain solutions for our banking customers. HPE’s Mission Critical Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) enables customers to run distributed ledger blockchain workloads that dem-and 100% fault tolerance at mission critical levels and ensures massive scalability to grow with the business. Wipro is leveraging HPE Aruba’s Software Defined Branch solution to enhance visibility, cloud agility, control and policy enforcement by integrating operations, security and management of wireless, wired and the WAN, all from a single pane of glass. We are helping banks redefine Desktop Virtualization and deliver the new age comprehensive virtual work place through Wipro VirtuaDesk™. The solution enhances application performance and provides flexibility to the customers in choosing an on-premise or hosted-appliance solution based on HPE’s hyper converged platform.
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on its own each year. Specializing in
collaboration between players at the
digital transformation, customer exper-
opposite ends of the spectrum.
ience, application engineering and
“We started this group within Wipro
infrastructure and business operation
after asking ourselves this: what if our
services, Wipro’s Americas region eng-
existing clients, where we have made
ages numerous high-profile clients, in-
a significant chunk of our revenue, don’t
cluding some of the largest banks
exist in 10-15 years’ time – what is going
in the US.
to happen to them?” he explains. “The
Firmly established within that sphere,
traditional banks and financial institu-
Mahesh’s ‘New-Age Financial Services’
tions are getting disrupted by new-age
initiative represents something more
platform companies, whether they like
adventurous as it looks to encourage
it or not. w w w.wi p ro. com
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“Builders of innovation, both on the business model side and the operations side, are driven by innovative technologies and some of our incumbent clients need to adapt to these tech-driven changes. “Embracing innovation from the outside – from start-ups and fintech – is essential for them and for companies like us. While these start-ups might be small and may not even meet our threshold of being a client today, in a few years they will be the next unicorns. “That’s the broad genesis of what we thought about when we set up the new ecosystem. Wipro’s part in that is to build a strategic partnership between the established companies and the start-ups. We understand the industry domain; we focus on technology and can enable organizations as small as a fintech to scale up, leveraging our relationship with the larger financial institutions.”
A NEW-AGE ECOSYSTEM The importance of Mahesh’s project to Wipro’s future vision can be reflected in the fact that, two years ago, he was given his remit from the very top. Working under the guidance of the company’s Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director – Abidali Z. Neemuchwala, and with strategic direction from President & Global Head, BFSI – Shaji Farooq, he has built w w w.wi p ro. com
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Revenues of over
$8bn
Incorporated in
1945 Over
175,000 12
employees
a cluster team made up of key person-
By creating what Mahesh refers to
nel based in Silicon Valley, New York,
as a ‘360-degree’ partnership eco-
Bangalore and London.
system, Wipro is able to provide the
‘New-Age Financial Services’ encour-
balance in momentum between a larger
ages a two-way street of collaboration
organization’s execution and the impetus
between client and start-up, with the
of a start-up through an agile ‘right
end goal of improving operations for
model’ delivery process.
both parties. For the client, welcoming
“A start-up operates at a very high
a start-up’s ideas is a way of accelerat-
velocity but a client organization operates
ing its own innovation, keeping it ahead
not even close to that, so the question
of the competition. For the smaller firm,
is how we bridge that gap,” he says.
a relationship opens doors to resourc-
“Firstly, Wipro comes in. Then we help
es, customers and funding.
these fintechs or start-ups find the
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right stakeholders to navigate large
thing from an end-to-end perspective
organizational complexities.”
and say, look, if you’re reimagining your
“For example, if they have a unique
model into this process, this is actually
asset in any business process area,
how we help you with your time-to-
how do you take an asset or platform
market. If you build it, it will probably
to a larger organization? And how do
take four years. If we can partner in this
you identify those stakeholders who’ll
new-age ecosystem, we can actually
be interested in assimilating that into
do it in four months.”
the larger organizations?”
Embracing outside innovation is now
“Thirdly, we assist our clients in their
becoming a vital strategic approach for
transformation journey more holistically.
the most successful companies as they
For example, we don’t just look at one
seek out external partners for sourcing
business process – we look at every-
ideas, commercialization and expansion w w w.wi p ro. com
“ We are able to constantly assess and understand the implication and complexities that result from running real world businesses. This helps start-ups adapt their solutions to these needs” 14
— Mahesh Raja, Vice President, Financial Services, Americas, Wipro Limited
into adjacent businesses and new segments. According to Mahesh, ‘entire corporate strategies are predicated on a networked model’ – but it’s a model that doesn’t come without obstacles.
CHALLENGES WITH COLLABORATION For Mahesh, the most common issue to contend with is what has become referred to as ‘Not Invented Here Syndrome’, or ‘NIHS’. Larger organizations often harbour cultures steeped in NIHS, instinctively reacting
negatively to ideas and concepts from an external source. “This syndrome is pretty common in many large enterprises,” he notes. “This is where Wipro comes in and says, ‘Hey, let us help you embrace some of these outside innovations and bring it in house for you to see if it works’.” Secondly, Mahesh believes start-ups are often too narrow in their focus when compared with the broad digital transformation agendas set by the CEOs and other C-level executives of larger organizations. Additionally, he observes that smaller operations tend to lack the deep domain knowledge in areas of compliance and legality while also falling short in the resource to focus on long-term solution viability. “These barriers affect the success of the collaboration between established companies and start-ups,” he adds. “Start-ups also find it difficult to navigate the vast corporate structures and processes of the established companies to reach the right audience for the solutions they have. “For lack of a better term, Wipro is trying to be a partner that helps bring these fears into the same ecosystem by trying the ‘balance’ option. We have deep experience in working with complex organizational structures and satisfying the stringent requirement of these functions.” w w w.wi p ro. com
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“We also have a lot of domain and functional experience and expertise that has been built over a long period of association with our clients. We are able to constantly assess and understand the implication and complexities that result from running real world businesses. This helps start-ups adapt their solutions to these needs.�
AN OPEN INNOVATION PATHWAY Wipro has evaluated more than 1,200+ new-age businesses as part of the project, but with current manpower 16
it has elected to focus on a handful of promising assets in the fields of business model innovations, cognitive artificial intelligence and machine-learning; technologies that have proven the most disruptive for its major clients. Wipro has partnered with three companies in that specific space (AI/ Cognitive), each of which has developed a unique business model and platform with the potential to transform processes across the sector. Additionally, it is working with challenger banks in North America, Europe and Latin America, on top of a major project with a large bank with operations across two continents.
With a dearth of competition in this area, Wipro believes it has a serious opportunity to broaden its horizons and exist at the centre of a new era of open innovation in financial services. “The way we are looking at the newage ecosystem is not that it’s going to make the next $100mn or $500mn for us but that we are starting to work with those companies, which we have never worked with in the past,” concludes Mahesh. “From our perspective, we have to start operating and thinking like these new-age companies because the way we need to service them is very different. They’re really nimble, really agile and very rapid.” “I think it’s a significant differentiator for us as a company and we believe this will be a wedge into the marketplace, especially with some of the propositions we are having with our current customers. It is a real opportunity for Wipro.”
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About Wipro Limited Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO) is a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company. We harness the power of cognitive computing, hyperautomation, robotics, cloud, analytics and emerging technologies to help our clients adapt to the digital world and make them successful. A company recognized globally for its comprehensive portfolio of services, strong commitment to sustainability and good corporate citizenship, we have over 175,000 dedicated employees serving clients across six continents. Together, we discover ideas and connect the dots to build a better and a bold new future.