Wipro Testing Unit Comes Of Age

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Bangalore: Suresh Vaswani, president of Wipro Infotech, will now also function as president of Wipro’s TIS and Interops, which is Wipro’s testing division, an area that Wipro is betting big on.

The testing division, which had 1,700 professionals in March, has already crossed the 2000 mark. “Last year, we grew at 100 per cent in terms of headcount,” said Gangadharaiah CP, vice-president Interop Solutions, Wipro Technologies. The division expects to maintain the momentum this year too.

The testing division — which tests systems to see if it confirms to standards — has grown over 100 per cent in revenue terms over the last two years. In 2002-03, the division had recorded $23.5 million in revenues. Last fiscal, it was about $50 million.

Testing revenue is six per cent of the overall revenues of Wipro Technologies. The division aims to increase its contribution to 10 per cent in a year or two.

Interops division was started in 1997 as a Interoperability test solution provider for telecom equipment vendors as a service offering. “Subsequently, we gained sufficient knowledge and ventured into testing peripherals, storage devices, consumer products and mobile handsets,” said Mr Gangadharaiah.

“In 2000-01, when there was a significant downturn in the telecom business, Interops started looking at other business avenues for its growth,” he said.

As a result, testing division started offering test consultancy across all segments that Wipro Technologies is currently engaged in. “A lot of enterprises found that outsourcing testing to an independent party reduces the risk of critical failures post deployment,” he said.

As more and more enterprises are looking to outsource testing, the market looks lucrative.

According to a Meta group survey, testing business in India was $200 million in 2003-04. Indian industry expects testing to bring in anywhere between $700 million and $1 billion in revenues by 2007.