Wipro’s biggest: Wins $1.5 billion deal from US company

BENGALURU: Wipro has made a surprise comeback into the billion-dollar deal table. It has bagged a $1.5-billion, 10-year deal from Illinois-based Alight Solutions. It is Wipro’s largest win so far and will provide a much needed boost to CEO Abidali Neemuchwala’s efforts to revive the company, which has been the slowest growing among the big Indian IT services companies.

Wipro had last done such a large deal in 2014, when it signed a $1.1-billion outsourcing contract with Canadian logistics firm Atco. Among Indian IT services companies, it is only TCS that has in recent times won multiple billion-plus dollar deals.

Alight, which clocked $2.4 billion revenue in 2016, provides benefits administration and cloud-based HR and financial solutions leveraging technology and data. It has 14 global delivery centres and over 1,400 clients.

Wipro said the engagement will enable digital transformation of Alight’s offerings across health, wealth, HR and finance solutions. “It will enhance the employee experience of Alight’s clients by leveraging Wipro’s strengths in cognitive automation and data analytics,” the company said.

A few months ago, Wipro had signed a strategic partnership with Alight Solutions’ India operations for $117 million (Rs 810 crore), under which it took over the captive centre operations of Alight. The operations were across four locations in India — Gurugram, Noida, Mumbai and Chennai.

Neemuchwala said the deal is a testimony to the capabilities the company has built through its strategic investments in Wipro Digital, cloud platforms and cognitive platform Wipro Holmes. “We will leverage this expertise to digitise and modernise Alight’s core across platforms, technologies and operations,” he said.

Chris Michalak, CEO of Alight Solutions, said the partnership with Wipro would enhance its client experience by drawing on Wipro’s leading position in automation and innovation.