Bangalore-based Wipro wants to be among the top 10 global IT service firms in terms of revenue within four years and plans more acquisitions including in Germany to achieve that, its chairman said on Saturday.Azim Premji, head of India’s third-largest software exporter, said his company was looking to buy IT services firms especially in Germany this year. This was part of global acquisition plan searching for firms that generate revenues of up to $200 million, he told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos.The New York-listed company, which provides IT solutions and services such as systems integration, software application development and maintenance, has been buying foreign firms to accelerate growth.“We certainly plan to be within top 10 in the market in terms of revenues in the next three to four years,” said Premji, India’s second-richest man who owns about 80 per cent of the $17 billion company.“We want to increase our footprint in Europe . We are looking at companies in infrastructure, particularly in Europe, particularly in Germany,” he said, adding that on his shopping list were also IT companies dealing with energy utilities, data centres, engineering and healthcare.“They are mid-sized to small-sized companies with revenues between $30-40 million to $200 million. We will spend on what we have to spend. We are sitting on $1 billion in cash.”Wipro said in November it was on track to boost IT services revenue by per cent in the fourth quarter compared with the previous three months to $633 million. “We always meet our target,” Premji said.He expected the IT services industry’s revenue growth rate in the fiscal year ending March 2007 to be 32-33 per cent. “We have consistently grown ahead of the industry. I would assume the industry growth for the next (fiscal) year would be at least 30 per cent,” he said. On the Indian rupee, which appreciated more than 6 per cent against the dollar in the past six months, Premji said: “It puts some pressure on margins. We have to raise productivity more, we have to get better prices.”Infosys sees no slowdown in outsourcing spendDAVOS: Infosys Technologies, India’s second-largest software exporter, expects spending on outsourcing to continue to rise in 2007 despite increasingly contained corporate technology budgets, its chief executive said.Speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Nandan Nilekani said Infosys expected to maintain its momentum in 2007 and could consider strategic acquisitions as it accelerates growth outside India.“We have not seen any slowdown on outsourcing. It’s not about total spending, it’s about how much of that spending is being diverted for offshoring and outsourcing,” he said.“Even if budgets for technology spending don’t go up very much — they may go up a few percentage points — the amount of money that is reallocated from existing ways to new ways of spending (like outsourcing) will go up.”Nilekani added Infosys, which develops applications, designs supply chains and offers back-office facilities, saw billing rates “stable with an upward bias”.Infosys has grown its presence in Europe at more than 60 per cent a year for the last three years and is also expanding in China as many of its US and European corporate clients move into the fast-growing Chinese market, Nilekani said. “While organic growth is a very important part of what we are doing, we believe that as we progress in the strategic direction of building a new generation of IT and consulting firm, strategic acquisitions are a possibility,” Nilekani said.“Those acquisitions will help us to get into a new market, get people with skills we don’t have, help us to launch a new service, allow us to enter a new vertical domain where we need expertise.”
