Recovery in IT industry is solid, sustainable: Premji

BANGALORE - Recovery in the IT industry is solid and sustainable, as growth during the last two-three quarters has been exceptional, Wipro chairman Azim Premji asserted Friday.

Recovery in growth has been fairly exceptional, solid and sustainable. It is not a catch-up of the past demand. And lot of spending is discretionary, which again is not a catch up of past demand. Lot of spending is transaction, transformational projects, which are quite unique that many companies didn’t do two years back,” Premji told reporters here.

Recalling that over the past two years, clients had cut down budgets, especially discretionary budgets, Premji said the reality of life was that the situation had completely changed.

We believe that this growth is sustainable going into the future, Premji noted.

With customers doing well in terms of orders and top-line growth, Premji said for the IT industry, it was back to business as usual.

I think most important is that the legitimacy of global companies like Wipro is significantly higher today than it was two-three years ago. Hence, a larger percentage of the flow of business is coming to us, Premji pointed out.

Noting that in the domestic market, the company was doing larger, complex contracts in diverse sectors in which it was not a major player two-three years ago, Premji said there was also increase in market share

It is winners which will get the bigger share of this growth, Premji said.

Clarifying his comment on macro-economic environment remaining uncertain, Premji said it was a unique phenomenon wherein countries were not doing well but companies were.

It is a very unique phenomenon. Countries are not doing well but companies are, he noted.

Earlier, Premji said in a statement that the company’s global IT services business saw strong momentum in demand, as customers tried to catch up with the under-investment in IT during the previous years.

While the macro-economic environment continues to remain uncertain, there is higher degree of confidence at the micro level, Premji added.