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IBS Center for Management Research

Wipro at Crossroads: The Failed Dual CEO Structure
This case was written by Hadiya Faheem, under the direction of G V Muralidhara, IBS Hyderabad.
It was compiled from published sources, and is intended to be used as a basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a management situation.
 2013, IBS Center for Management Research
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Though the turnaround plan helped Wipro gain traction in key segments, it still continued to lag behind its peers. Some industry analysts opined that ever since Wipro had brought in Kurien, the company had been playing a waiting game with investors. They felt that the latest FY 2013 results signaled that Wipro still had a long way to go to match the performance of its peers. Some industry observers also pointed out that Kurien’s efforts to turn the company around had also not yielded any results. According to Dipen Shah, head of private client group research, Kotak Securities, a stock broking and distribution company, “The management has made several changes to the structure to align it more with the demand generation process and increasing efficiency. We believe that, these initiatives have not yet started showing the expected results and will start reflecting in the financials in due course of time.”12
Some analysts pointed out that Wipro’s poor performance in contrast to the robust performance from companies such as TCS and HCL Technologies (HCL) raised the question about the capability that different players had for capturing the nature of emerging demand, where newer technologies such as cloud, analytics, and mobility were gaining prominence.

BACKGROUND NOTE
Wipro was founded in 1945 as a peanut oil company by Mohammad Hasham