Rishad Premji Admits FY24 as "The Most Challenging Year" in Company History Rishad Premji, Wipro's chairman, states FY24 was one of the most challenging years in the company's history with reported revenue of $10.8 billion.
You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
In a letter to the stakeholders, Wipro's chairman, Rishad Premji admitted that FY24 has not been good to the company. For FY24, Wipro reported revenue of $10.8 billion, a decrease of 4.4 per cent, while net income stood at $1.3 billion. IT services operating margin for the year was at 16.1 per cent, an expansion of 50 bps over FY23. Earnings per share for the year was at INR 20.89 ($0.25), an 0.8 per cent increase YoY. The operating cash flow of the company was the highest in recent years at INR 176.2 billion ($2.1 billion), an increase of 34.9 per cent YoY and at 159 per cent of the net income for the year.
"FY24 has undoubtedly been one of the most challenging years in our company's history. The global economic climate has been quite volatile, affecting the technology spends of our clients. These headwinds, however, have only strengthened our resolve. We remain committed to innovation and are dedicated to investing in our future," Rishad Pemji stated in the letter.
The chairman assured the stakeholders that despite some short-term challenges, the fundamentals of the business remain unchanged. Clients continued to prioritise digital transformation, leveraging AI to reduce costs, enhance operational efficiency, and drive future growth.
Wipro's CEO & MD, Srini Pallia, who took over in April 2024 also commented, "I am pleased to share that we recorded large deal bookings with a total contract value (TCV) of $4.6 billion. This represents a 17.4 per cent growth from the previous year. For the full year, the TCV reached $14.9 billion. Furthermore, we have not only boosted the revenue share from our top five and top ten clients but also welcomed three more clients into this 100 million plus dollar bracket."
Shifting landscape to AI
Premji also spoke about the shift in how businesses view AI, particularly Generative AI. From being a topic of curiosity, it is now a core component of long-term strategies for value creation. AI offers a unique opportunity to reshape industries, drive efficiencies, and unlock innovation.
He stated, "In FY24, we made a significant investment in our ai360 strategy. Building on our decade-long investments, and with responsible AI the core of ai360, we are creating an end-to-end innovation ecosystem integrating AI into every platform, tool, and solution used both internally and with our clients."
The company is investing in expanding partnerships with key players, such as AWS, Google, IBM, Microsoft and NVIDIA along with Wipro's own platforms through innovation arm Lab45, as well as the Wipro Enterprise Generative AI (WeGA) studio.
Premji revealed that the company actively deployed GenAI across internal processes driving hundreds of use cases. WiNow, Wipro's AI-powered enterprise chatbot for self-service, is currently being used by nearly all the employees and has served about 6.5 million queries. "On an average WiNow responds to employees in 6 seconds, significantly improving productivity in critical tasks like approvals and onboarding, as well as reducing cost to serve," he added.