Wipro dreams big from aviation, defence business

Bangalore, Feb 24: One of India's largest software firms Wipro Industries is diversifying to other areas and concentrating on defence and aviation industries. With plans to sell hydraulic cylinders and manufacturing components for aviation and defence in the 3-4 years, the message is loud and clear, they plan to diversify and diversify big. They plan to garner $1 billion from the business alone.

Pratik Kumar, the head of Wipro"s infrastructure engineering division said, “We want to more than treble our cylinder manufacturing capacity and flesh out a more focussed strategy for addressing the lucrative defence offset market." The engineering division contributes to only a meagre 10% of the group's business. They also plan to establish manufacturing hubs in Brazil and China for their hydraulics business.

Wipro also holds the honour of supplying materials to the world"s biggest maker of construction equipments Caterpillar. In order to further advance their supply, have decided to set up a manufacturing unit in Brazil. They had set up a large unit in Wujin hitech industrial zone in Changzou, China last year. Kumar added, “We are exploring both Greenfield and acquisition route to expand in Brazil, it"s an opportunity we cannot afford to get late in addressing, The economy is growing 7-8 %, and with the Olympics ahead, prospects are looking bright."

Wipro is going full-steam in its diversification efforts and have received adequate approvals to set up a
defence manufacturing unit at Devanahalli, Bangalore. These attempts might help Wipro counter the many market fluctuations with ease. A Mumbai-based analyst said on the move, “Wipro"s biggest strength is its soaps to software positioning, but our concern is that it should not spread too thin. Also, sectors like defence bring other regulatory risks and long sales cycles."

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