Inside story of Azim Premji's next billion-dollar plan

The same buzz of excitement and serendipity that swept the tiny campus of Wipro in 1977 has returned to its sprawling Bangalore headquarters today.
More than three decades after Azim Premji sensed an opportunity in information technology for his consumer products company, the billionaire businessman is taking his next big step, ecology. And just like the way IT did, the new business is likely to transform the face of Wipro forever.
For those who know Premji, it is not uncommon to see the fifth richest Indian on the Forbes List and the 63-year-old chairman of Wipro switching off the lights before leaving office. It is this commitment to avoid waste that has turned Premji’s attention to ecology and sustainability.
In October 2008, even as it warned of slowing growth in its main software outsourcing business in the backdrop of a global financial crisis, Wipro released a recruitment ad for two new businesses, Wipro Water and Wipro EcoEnergy. The company has spent the previous two years preparing for this diversification, which may turn out to be the company’s third big change. The first was when a 21-year-old Premji took charge at Wipro after his father’s sudden death; the next was when the vanaspati and soap maker transformed itself into a multi-billion dollar information technology giant in the 80s and 90s.
But for Premji, it’s not just a diversification. “Look at it in three dimensions: As a citizen, ecological sustainability is a global problem but completely unaddressed in India. So how do you influence… your employees, partners, customers? Second what can you do within the company? Third, we see incremental business opportunities that we can create in our existing businesses.”
The business idea is simple. For the last quarter century, Wipro has been busy cutting technology and operational costs for some of the world’s largest corporations. Now, it wants to tell them how to cut energy usage and reduce their carbon footprint. It is convinced that green will be the largest force to influence the world economy in the years to come. According to a UN report last year, the global market for environmental products and services will double from $1.37 trillion at present to $2.74 trillion by 2020.
Chief Financial Officer Suresh Senapathy says green services and solutions will bring in up to one out of every four dollars of the company’s revenue, three years from now. In the financial year ending March 2009, Wipro had revenue of more than Rs. 25,000 crore. Even if the revenue were to stagnate, a fourth of it — Rs. 6,250 crore — from ecology is no small amount. The plan also aligns well with Premji’s desire to ease down IT’s profit contribution from 93 percent currently to 70 percent in the next few years.
Today it has 270 people in its water and eco energy businesses. In the last six months it has been setting up eco-friendly infrastructure for clients: A bio-gas plant in Taj Kovalam for recycling organic waste; sustainable lighting, cooling and recycling at Asian Paints’ Greenfield plant in Rohtak, Haryana; LED lights to reduce electricity bills at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore campus.