Rajan Kohli to head Wipro’s digital business

BENGALURU: Wipro has appointed Rajan Kohli, senior vice president and global head of banking and financial services, as the head of its newly carved out business unit Wipro Digital.
This is a big responsibility for Kohli, considering that the $7.3-billion IT services firm expects digital to become one of its top three service lines over the next three years, generating revenues of over $1 billion.Currently, business applications services (BAS) and global infrastructure services (GIS) are the biggest service lines, contributing 29% and 27.3% respectively to the company’s revenue.
Avinash Rao, the global business head of Wipro Digital, will report to Kohli. A Wipro veteran, Kohli was previously the chief marketing officer for Wipro's global IT business responsible for shaping corporate identity and global branding. The company did not comment on Kohli’s appointment.
Wipro CEO T K Kurien had said in an interview to TOI last week, “I believe the digital business is the next big business for us. We are going to break out digital from the rest of the group. It will have its own culture, process, skillsets, and compensation.”
The digital unit will focus on areas like banking, CPG (consumer packaged goods), manufacturing and healthcare. Wipro Digital has already entered into a partnership with Adobe for creating integrated marketing, commerce, analytics and customer experience solutions.
Wipro Digital is expected to work and think like a lean startup. It plans to have 300 people by the end of this year, from 60 now. Newer technologies like analytics, big data and mobility are reshaping IT services to deliver customer-centric digital solutions. Wipro Digital works at the intersection of strategy, design and technology to unlock value for its customers.
Kurien had said the digital team’s mandate was to reimagine a process completely to make it more effective, use tech components to do the architecture, and use people from the rest of Wipro to deliver. “It will be a little bit of a commando force. Commandos don't follow typical army training, and they are not large groups,” Kurien said.
As part of the digital thrust, Wipro has set up four digital pods — including in Bengaluru, London, and the San Francisco Bay Area — that act like innovation labs. These have giant digital screens simulating applications in a live-use case scenario. Most large IT and technology firms are carving out separate digital units, deploying automation and artificial intelligence tools. Accenture recently launched the Accenture Digital Services.
Meanwhile, Wipro has appointed Naveen Rajdev as its chief marketing officer (CMO) to replace Puneet Chandra who resigned from the company in January. Rajdev, currently based in Atlanta, is a vice president in the company overseeing clients in financial services.