Books

Bangalore Tiger: How Indian Tech Upstart Wipro is Rewriting the Rules of Global Competition
By Steve Hamm, 2007, Tata McGraw-Hill, New Delhi, pp 329, Price: Rs 299. angalore Tiger, a book on the Indian tech upstart Wipro, is remarkable for two things: the openness of Wipro to bare it all and the ability of journalist Hamm to extract it all. The book provides detailed information about the way the company operates and its strengths, weaknesses and challenges as it seeks to become a major global player in the IT industry. As the author notes, Wipro is an amazingly open company Everything is transparent. This feature alone makes the book worth a reading. Though it is a book about the rise of Wipro, Hamm also dabbles in two others, TCS and Infosys, and extends this analysis to draw some generalisations about the rise of India and the lessons for western companies and workers. In attempting to tell the amazing tale of the rise of the Indian tech industry through a single participant, Hamm has clearly chosen the right company for the right story at the right time. Wipro has transitioned from a failing vegetable oil company to a body-shop or services company and has done well to develop into a holistic technology solution provider in a very short period of time, a period that also epitomises the coming of India. The author rightly attributes the growth of Wipro and its siblings to the three pillars of strength: labour arbitrage, abundant technical talent and global operational excellence. Hamm believes that while the first two factors provided the initial impetus, the third has made possible the rapid strides and the continued rise of fortunes. However, the industry is already complaining of sharp increases in wages of skilled manpower. It remains to be seen how the increased labour costs and the loss of primary competitive advantage will impact the Indian tech industry; and whether the Indian education sector can resolve its issues
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and produce adequate numbers of the required talent, if the country is not to lose its competitive edge prematurely to other low cost economies. The resource based view of firms in the strategy literature holds that firms can survive and thrive in a competitive market only if they possess unique and inimitable resources. Hamm highlights Wipros significant progress in at least two such resources human resource management and customer loyalty. Human resource management at Wipro is reported to have approached the level of a science. Scheduling time for continuous learning, using bench time for training, zero politics, appropriate rewards and other recognitions, true freedom of expression and speech, reducing frills and perks, and blending youth and experience are some of the important tactics that Wipro has used to enrich its HRM. Wipro seems to be obsessive about customer satisfaction, a fact that could largely explain the fact that it has become one of the most accomplished tech services providers in the world, delivering business value through a combination of process excellence, quality frameworks, and service delivery innovation. It is known to go above and beyond the call of duty to make customers happy, taking on extra work, picking up the tab for expenses and advising customers on the right approach even if it means shortterm losses in revenue. Not unexpectedly, such practices have helped it gain customer loyalty, repeat contracts and larger involvement in managing IT systems for its customers, who are all large corporations around the globe. With Wipro forcing other corporations into improving their efficiency and intensifying the level of competition, the book has great practical significance. It is a good read for Indian managers who might like to shape their corporation the Wipro way. Western readers would find it useful for understanding a phenomenon that has created widespread consternation through loss of jobs and changing the rules of global competition. However, Hamms extraordinary ability to collect
Books

information notwithstanding, the book has no revolutionary ideas, nothing that hasnt been said before, though it is good to be reminded of the essentials. The book is in the nature of a general book on management and can best be treated as a long case study with in-depth and real-time information on an upcoming corporation. The book tends to be repetitive in an attempt to drive home some key points; the author could easily have taken 100 pages off the book. Another shortcoming of the book is that, although the author provides adequate information about the success and challenges of Wipro, he fails to justify his selection of Wipro to showcase the success of the industry, or explicate his claim that Wipro stands out from the pack. TCS and Infosys have been equally successful in their own ways. In fact, Infosys which started later than Wipro with just $250 in 1981 from scratch exceeds it in revenue by a billion dollars. Lastly, while it must be pretty heady for Azim Premji and Wipro to be compared with Bill Gates and Wal-Mart respectively, I am sure they are mindful of the fact that it still is a dream. A sweet dream for them and for all Indians, but a dream nonetheless!
Punit Arora Punit Arora is an officer in the Indian Police Service, at present pursuing his doctorate at Syracuse University, New York, USA. pun8max@hotmail.com; puarora@syr.edu

IIMB Management Review, December 2007

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