Wipro, India's third largest software services exporter, is understood to have bagged a multi-million dollar IT outsourcing contract from ING Australia -- a leading fund manager and life insurer in the continent. Wipro bagged this estimated $100 million (around Rs 500 crore) 3-4 year contract, trouncing most global and Indian IT services firms, sources close to the development told Business Standard.
This is the second consecutive deal win for Wipro in Australia, after the Bangalore-headquartered company won close to $100 million IT outsourcing contract from Australian brewer Fosters.
Sydney-headquartered ING Australia is a joint venture between ING Group which holds a 51 per cent stake, and ANZ, the fourth largest Australian Bank, which holds 49 per cent. The company employs over 2,200 staff located across its various offices in the state. In December last year, Canadian software firm Speedware had completed ING Australia's IT modernisation programme which included migration of applications to the new banking platform.
Wipro, according to the contract, is expected to manage and support ING Australia's IT infrastructure and business applications for multiple years. A Wipro spokesperson declined to comment on the deal, dismissing it as 'speculative'. An email query sent to ING Australia's spokesperson today, remained unanswered.
Sources, however, said that although the agreement had been signed, Wipro would start deploying resources for the client in the beginning of next year. "The contract will require huge onsite capabilities what Wipro is in the process of building up," the sources added.
While the deal will strengthen its presence in Australia, the biggest growth market for the company in the APAC region (Australia and New Zealand is part of APAC region for Wipro), this is also indicative of the fact that the scarcity of deal flows from the BFSI sector may be soon going to be thing of the past.
Wipro is relatively new to the Australian market when compared with the other major Indian IT services firms like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys Technologies. Of the over 700 Wipro employees dedicated to Australian clients, 450 are located in three different locations in Australia providing support and services to about a dozen Australian firms, especially in the banking and insurance, energy and utility (E&U), government, telecom and retail space. The company has marquee customers in all these segments including Origin Energy (Wipro signed a large transformation with the company last year), Axa Insurance, ANZ Bank, Telstra.
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Currently, APAC region including Japan and India contributes about 14.8 per cent of Wipro's global revenue. Within APAC, Australia had been the highest growth market for Wipro with a CAGR of about 100 per cent for the last four years.
Australia which has relatively remained less affected by the global economic turmoil, is a highly lucrative market from IT outsourcing services point of view. The IT market in Australia and New Zealand is estimated to be about $14 billion and is dominated by the global majors including IBM, Accenture and most of the Indian vendors including TCS, Infosys and Wipro.