Wipro always surprises the street with its optimistic outlook. For the quarter ending September, the company not only reported a 5% y-o-y increase in IT services revenue, but has also guided for a 2.5-4.5% increase in revenues for Q3. Executive director and joint CEO Girish Paranjpe talks to Surabhi Agarwal. Excerpts:
What is the basis of the reported 5% growth in IT services revenue in Q2 on a year-on-year basis?
The growth in the last quarter has come in a fairly broad-based way. At least two of our verticals ? energy and utilities, along with media and telecom ? have shown around 11.5% growth, while manufacturing and healthcare are up 4-5%. Even verticals like retail and FMCG have shown an increase of 3%.
How worried are you because of currency volatility and the present appreciation of the rupee against the greenback?
We believe that we are an IT company and not a financial services company out to make money out of currency movements. We hedge as much as required as company policy. But, it doesn’t worry us too much. If there are some quarters where we have lost revenues, we have gained in others.
What has been the impact this quarter?
We have registered a gain of around 2-3% because of the favourable currency this quarter. Overall, we have hedges of a billion plus in place. Our strategy is to always have hedges in place for the next few years as we don’t want to be left uncovered against currency movement at any point of time.
What is your outlook on hiring?
The around 7,000 to 8,000 people we hired from campuses will join between the next month and March 2010. In the case of lateral hiring, which is more market driven and need based, we will take on people as the situation improves.
You have guided for a 3.7% -5.7% sequential increase in IT services revenues for Q3. What makes you so optimistic?
Despite the fact that there are fewer working days in the quarter ending Q3, we have guided for an increase in revenues. We are more optimistic about the demand situation than many of our peers.