Wipro to invest Rs 400 crore in Pune in 3 years

Wipro Technologies, the global IT services arm of Wipro, plans to invest Rs 375-400 crore over a period of 3-5 years in Pune.

The announcement was made at the inauguration of phase II of the company's development centre at Hinjewadi (Pune). With the opening of the new centre, the Wipro division will have an employee strength of 6,300, including the hands at its 5.8 lakh square feet campus (phase-I).

The company is seeking another 50 acres for phase III expansion. With the new facility, the company expects to up its capacity to 17,000 in Pune.

The IT major has already acquired land in Jaipur, Vizag and Chandigarh. It had recently started a centre in Kochi. While construction of a new campus in Noida is under way, the company is looking at land in Nagpur and 100 acre would be acquired in Mysore over the next eight weeks.

"The strategy would be to develop centres as special economic zones (SEZs) wherever possible," Azim Premji, chairman, Wipro, told the media in a teleconference.

He said the company would take the overall employee base to over 1.6 lakh in five years. He said Wipro was looking at acquisitions in the US and UK in the $200 million range. "In the past, we have acquired companies in the range of $25-30 million and would now be looking at larger companies in the range of $200 million."

Commenting on the effect of the rupee appreciation, he said: "The rupee appreciation against the dollar hasn't caught us unaware and we are working towards better productivity and getting better prices so as to get more value to justify the appreciation."

Premji is also trying to address the acute shortage of manpower by initiating programmes such as Earn and Learn, where graduates from the science stream were recruited and also trained to become Masters in Software Engineering through an association with BITS Pilani.

Besides conducting training programmes on the campuses, Wipro is now looking at the hinterland to fuel its recruitment process.

The company recently tied up with a finishing institute for undertaking the training of graduate students in Chhindwara district in Madhya Pradesh.

The programme will be launched in four weeks and will undertake training for 100 students. "In the next 6-9 months we will role this programme to other parts of India," said Premji.