Wipro to hire 150 frontline sales staff in United States

BANGALORE: Wipro will hire some 150 frontline sales staff in the United States in a singular development that denotes the company’s twin ambitions of boosting revenue and presenting a local face in its main market. Over the next 3-5 months, Wipro will have hired young college graduates as well as experienced sales veterans to build up its team in US cities where it currently does not have presence, people familiar with the company’s thinking said.

While Indian companies have been increasing their hiring in the United States, mainly employing software engineers, the Bangalore-based company’s decision to rapidly expand its sales team represents a new level of commitment to the United States. So far, Indians have been dominant in frontline sales, where salaries are lucrative and successful executives receive a share as bonus depending on the size of contracts they win.

“It helps when your front-end sales guy can talk about baseball, NBA and show some cultural closeness,” said Pradeep Mukherji, president and managing partner at Avasant, a Los Angeles-based technology advisory firm. “And then comes the political angle. Indian companies have to show they are job creators in America.”

Wipro CEO TK Kurien, whose strategy of reviving Wipro’s sales as the company looks to improve its growth rates after under-performing India’s IT services industry for nearly two years. Indian software services companies, which get more than half of their revenue from the US, have high hopes for that market this year as economic growth returns and large enterprises spend more on technology. For Wipro, particularly, its ability to increase market share in the US will be crucial to chief executive TK Kurien’s plans for gaining growth momentum.

Ashish Chopra, a vice president at Mumbai-based brokerage firm Motilal Oswal, said Wipro is refurbishing its sales strategy in overseas markets as it faces growing competition from larger rivals such as IBM and Accenture. “They are hiring local sales staff to offer better interface in front of clients and it has worked very well for companies like Cognizant.” The US contributed 50 per cent to Wipro’s sales during 2013-14.