Rishad Premji might have to wait for 5 yrs before he takes the reins of Wipro

Thomas George

Succession plannings of business families have always been remained one of the most talked about topics that have enthused the insiders and outsiders alike. Today, taking charge of important positions in organizations' day to day affairs has become quite common for most of the heirs with strong business family legacy and an enviable career graph etched with degrees from top-notch universities, and quick stints with marque global consulting or investment banking firms. These are the logical steps for their aspiring future to lead their family run business effectively at some point of time. The public listed companies are also preparing the way for their majority shareholders to succeed and get the top job.

Wipro’s announcement to bring Rishad Premji on executive board from 1st May 2015 as whole time director will turn many heads to his career graph from being a business manager to board member in flat eight years. The plan was laid way back in 2007 and well executed over the last few years. A quick peek into his career at Wipro shows us his beginning from business a manager in BFSI vertical and moving on to manage treasury and investor relations followed by a stint at mergers and acquisition and subsequently being Chief Strategy Officer and then CTO of Wipro.

Before joining Wipro, he has worked with Bain & Co. and GE after his Harvard studies. The road upto executive board was well crafted and gave Rishad much needed learning under senior executives like Suresh Vaswani, Girish Paranjpe, Sudip Nandy and T.K Kurien apart from the leadership skills Mr. Premji Senior (AHP) could have imparted to his son. This learning is something which any heir or aspiring leader would envy for in his or her career.

It’s little premature to do an analysis of CEO in waiting; but knowing Wipro’s culture and process, we saw Rishad getting inducted into Wipro and without much delay we could even see him getting baptized with fire of the initial phase of global slowdown as well. Today, if we map his strength and shortcoming around experience and capabilities, it will stack up something like this:

Strength:

a)     Understanding of business and leadership roles

b)     Exposure to various functions and its operations

c)     Building new initiatives and future opportunities – $150 M Venture Fund for new-age start-up

d)     Financial acumen and its deployment

Yet to learn around:

a)     Leading and managing a company of Wipro's size

b)     Leading Transformation  and Change Management - Traditional IT Service to new digital business

c)     Customer intimacy – Taking on more market facing role and responsibility

d)     Faster decision making (e.g. decision on non-paying acquisitions and way forward)

e)     Retention of senior colleagues and top management officials

It will be interesting to see if this promising young man can acquire these strengths over the next few years or not. Will that be the only criterion? The answer is no taking the current external market forces and Wipro’s transformational process into consideration; I presume, it will take Rishad another 4-5 years to be a real contender for CEO post, while he could succeed as a COO in next 2-3 years.

So, why not a CEO soon?

Well, Wipro has a good leader in T. K Kurien, who in the last four years pruned, restructured and prepared the company to take it into new paradigm of opportunities around digital, hyper automation & robotics and artificial intelligence from being a assets heavy IMS businesses focus. He has invested in future business. However, the financial performance has not been very encouraging but Kurien provided the required changes in delivery and sales, and spoke about ‘Turbo charging the Core’ and ‘Securing the Business’. It earnestly wanted to claw back the high volume but low margin business from service lines such as BPO and IMS, where they have declining over the last few quarters.

Company recently hired Mr. Abid Ali Neemachwala as their Group President & COO. As TK’s five year contract coming to an end in the early next year. Mr. Neemachwala could succeed Mr. T. K Kurien in next one year time frame, if he is able to stage a turnaround in some of these businesses line. While other leaders like Rajan Kohli and Rishad might focus more on the new growing business opportunities and capabilities around Digital business and supporting new age start-ups respectively.

So it’s quite clear that Rishad got to wait for few more years, before really getting the reins of the company in his hands, but will surely gain a lot more in his current role.

He had to come onboard and take the weight of everybody’s expectation to emerge as a more refined and prepared leader for Wipro in future. No, matter how much talents or experience Rishad could bring to play; he will always be compared with his father and the IT czar, Azim H. Premji. Wipro founder Azim Premji took control of his own father's struggling vegetable oil business in 1960s and diversified it into an IT major. Now, whether Rishad can take over the IT business his father has built over last 3.5 decades which needs a transformation and impetus to grow? The argument is yes and it will happen in a progressive and phased out manner.