Case Study : Entrepreneurship in Action - Girish Paranjpe

Intrapreneurship is the act of behaving like an entrepreneur, except within a larger organization. In 1992, The American Heritage Dictionary acknowledged the popular use of a new word, intrapreneur, to mean "A person within a large corporation who takes direct responsibility for turning an idea into a profitable finished product through assertive risk-taking and innovation".

Intrapreneurship is now known as the practice of a corporate management style that integrates risk-taking and innovation approaches, as well as the reward and motivational techniques, that are more traditionally thought of as being the province of entrepreneurship.

The competencies in any professional can be grouped into three categories. Each professional has some combination of these. The degree of this permutation decides the level of success of the entrepreneur or Intrapreneur. Managerial and Administrator  skill succeed the person in its executive job, but the success at the topmost position needs seven qualities grouped under the entrepreneurship.

A.  Entrepreneurship :

1.    Initiative

2.    Sees and acts on opportunities

3.    Persistence

4.    Information Seeking

5.    Concern for high quality of work

6.    Commitment to work on track

7.    Efficiency orientation

B.  Manager :

1.    Systematic Planning

2.    Problem Solving

3.    Self Confidence   

C.  Administrator

1.    Assertiveness

2.    Persuasion

3.      Use of influence strategy  

Here , we try to evaluate these parameters  on Girish  Paranjpe who  has reached to the highest level of employed hierarchy.   He was  Joint CEO at  diversified conglomerate WIPRO Technologies  from  April 2008 till Jan 2011.

  

Wipro Technologies was established in 1980 as a subsidiary of Wipro (Western India Products) Limited listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Wipro was initially set up as a vegetable oil manufacturer in 1945 in Amalner, Maharashtra, producing sunflower Vanaspati oil and soaps. At that time, the company was called Western India Vegetable Products Limited (later abbreviated down to Wipro).

The company logo still contains a sunflower to reflect their original business. During the 1970s and 1980s, the company shifted its focus and began to look into business opportunities in the IT and computing industry, which was at nascent stages in India at that time. Wipro marketed the first indigenous homemade PC from India in 1985.

By 2000, Wipro Technologies emerged as the largest publicly listed software exporter in India and the first software services provider to be assessed at SEI Level 5 in the world. Wipro Limited is ranked #25 in the list of top companies of India in Fortune India 500 list in 2011. As of 2012, Wipro is the second largest IT services company by turnover in India and employs more than 136,734 people worldwide as of December 2011.

It provides outsourced research and development, infrastructure outsourcing, business process outsourcing (BPO) and business consulting services. The company operates in three segments: IT Services, IT Products, Consumer Care and Lighting. It is 9th most valuable brand in India according to an annual survey conducted by Brand Finance and The Economic Times in 2010.  

Girish Paranjpe  -  Early Life :

Girish Parnjpe

• He  did his schooling from prestigious 125 year old  Daly College  of Indore.  

• B.Com from Sydhenam College, Bombay University  

• He is also a Fellow Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and the Institute of Cost and Works Accountants of India.  

• Joined Wipro in 1990 and worked under fire brand CEO Vivek Paul before taking the top seat.  

Career at  Wipro Technologies :

• He started his career at Wipro  as a trainee. Steadily, he rose through the ranks including handling treasury at one point.  

• He has headed the finance function in virtually all of Wipro's businesses.  

•  In August 2000, he moved to a business role to head Wipro's fledgling BFSI (Financial Services) practice.  

• He served as a Director of Wipro Technologies, Ltd. ., since April 18, 2008 till January,2011.  He was a Member of Wipro's Corporate Executive Council.  

•  He was appointed as the Jt. CEO of Wipro’s IT services in 2008. He shared the position of CEO along with Mr. Suresh Vaswani  

• Paranjpe ‘s  direct responsibilities included the following business units:

®     Financial Services, Communication, Media, Telecom and Technology vertical.

• He was also directly responsible for driving Consulting, Business Technology Services, Product Engineering Solutions and other functions under him were Global Delivery, CTO and CIO office & Operations. 

• He held a broad range of leadership positions in critical portfolios across the Wipro Corporation during his tenure of 21 years. 

• After leaving Wipro he joined Bloom Energy Corporation, a US firm based at  California, as Managing Director  in July 2011.  

Prem Azimji :
Making Ground for the Sons

®    CEOs like Girish Paranjpe work as an Intrapreneur to create wealth for the stake holders mainly – Entrepreneur (e.g. Premji Azim)

1. Initiative :  

Taking actions to expand the business into new areas, products or services.

He was always forward looking. Building solutions for future in advance was his plus point.  He created team for future. He has also taken the initiative to implement innovative training programs like Insurance 101, 201 and Finance 101, 201 to educate more than 2000 people within the Finance Solutions Domain. 

2. Seeing and Acting on Opportunities :   

After completing the graduation in Commerce,  he saw an opportunity in finance and accountancy so took up for Chartered Accountancy and Cost Accountancy which in those was considered to be a tough course compared to the management degree.

After ICWA  preferred to join Wipro sensing the advantage in the diversification move of the company to emerging field of IT.  Five years later around 1995, India saw its first IT boom which benefitted  Wipro and Paranjpe both.

  

3. Persistence  :    

Taking suitable actions in the face of a significant obstacle.

At NASSCOM India Leadership Forum 2009 Wipro  Jt. CEO said, “Get closer to the customer- Really close Drive Transformation  and to do so Strengthen your organisation Become fit!!! Invest for your future.  Communicate internally within organization - What should be our approach.”

To differentiate, Wipro gave cost transformation solution to its customers and planned to do a lot more transformation in addition to costs, delivery transformation, business model transformation and so on and so forth.        

  

4. Concern for High Quality of Work :

 Doing things that meet or beat existing standards of excellence is desired in the competition world of IT and ITes services.  During 2010  one of the core competency area – Telecom for Wipro was passing through rough weather. Telecom for Wipro has two wings —service providers and equipment vendors. Wipro picked up and did well in the equipment vendor area, which is more difficult.

Stating a desire to produce work of high quality and making all  efforts to ensure the quality of  products or services could only give consistent results.

• During his helm, Wipro’s BFSI division experienced one of the strongest growth rates- at 45% annualized between FY04 and FY09. 

• In comparison, BSFI revenues of its top-tier peers increased at a CAGR of 33% during this period.  

5. Commitment to Work on Track  :  

On the eve after his resignation from Wipro, Paranjpe said in an interview to Mint, for the last 24 years every day, he has been busy thinking about what to do for Wipro tomorrow.

“Now I will have to start thinking about what to do for myself.”

During his stay with Wipro he must have made several personal sacrifices to complete a job because that was the highest priority. The rare quality of leader is not in taking credits but in accepting full responsibility for failures, if any. After the Q3 results in 2010-11  where it was below market expectation  and losing business  to Nasdaq-listed Cognizant Technologies, he gave no excuse. “We  could have done better, but failed this time.”, was his comment.

6. Systematic Planning :

Developing and using logical, step-by-step plans to reach goals.

Unprecedented economic situation put forward many obstacles in front of Wipro.  A different Customer behaviour IT Industry has to adapt – to the customer and to the new reality. Recessions do not last. Resilient companies do Which companies survive will depend on how they are managed now. This whole needed systematic planning.

To  pass through the rough patch Wipro had to Deliver more for less !!!  and creative solutions to business organizations were required  to generate business demand.

7. Problem Solving : 

         The tenure of Paranjpe as CEO was full of turmoil across the IT industry. US recession had started in 2007  and it was spreading to Europe.  Satyam fraud raised the doubts over the ethical approach of entire Indian corporate world.  Here in India, Karnataka government imposed penalty for alleged tax evasion, the infamous SHELL case also surfaced.

When all things are going wrong the CEOs are required to identify the  root-cause of the problem or objectives and develop  strategy  in  the light of objectives, resources and constraints keeping  alternatives, wherever necessary.

 During such a turbulent period not only he sailed through the allegations neat and clean, but also kept the organisation on the growth trail without causing conflict. Under him operating profits increased by 20 percent to $1B. Considering the crisis it was a phenomenal achievement.

Assertiveness  :

Soon after he took over as CEO in Jan 2009, the World Bank disclosed that apart from Satyam Computer Services Ltd, it had barred Wipro Ltd and Megasoft Ltd from doing any work for it for “providing improper benefits to bank staff.”

He dared to confront problems and issues with the world bank directly. Speaking politely but firmly he put forward the facts that  the alleged “improper benefits” were not any form of illegal inducement and were in keeping with US law.

“When Wipro listed its ADR (American depository receipt) on the NYSE in 2000, we allotted shares to several people including (some employees) of prospective clients as advised by our managers to the issues Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse,” Paranjpe said. “This was not barred under the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission, the US stock market regulator) regulations and this is standard practice in the US.”

9. Persuasion :

Paranjpe was known for his consensus building ability among Wipro Management. It was his ability to share and persuade that he did not find is strange to share the position of CEO with  Mr. Suresh Vaswani

To Knowledge@ Wharton in Miami during June’08  he said, “The best decision emerges when there are some counter views, when there's some amount of debate. Then, the right call gets taken. And what I've seen over the last three or four weeks that we've worked together, it's not that we're on the same page on everything, but finally the decision we have taken is the right decision. So, I think that is clearly, clearly bearing out.”

10. Use of Influence Strategies :

            To grow globally needs use of  a variety of strategies to influence others successfully.

Developing professional or business contacts are required  with influential people  to get own things done. He had the network in place.

He represented Wipro and the IT Industry in various public forums including the Prime Minister's Task Force on Information Technology, the NASSCOM, and at leading global business schools.


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