Wipro enters Saudi market with big project wins

Monday, 04 November 2002, 20:30 IST
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DUBAI: Wipro, one of India's largest IT companies, has entered the Saudi Arabian market by winning contracts worth 11 million Saudi riyals in the kingdom's petrochemical and healthcare sectors. Wipro chairman Azim Premji said he had held talks at the ministry of planning and the Saudi Telecom Company (STC) to identify new areas of cooperation. "The response was highly encouraging," he told the Arab News daily. In his first visit to the kingdom, Premji said he hoped to pick up $15 million (over 56 million Saudi riyals) worth of contracts in the next 11 months. "We are committed to building a strong base in Saudi Arabia and would like to cooperate in developing IT skills among the Saudis to make them self-sufficient in this sector," Premji said at a press conference attended by Prince Turki bin Abdullah, president, Dar Al Riyadh Group (Wipro's marketing arm in the kingdom), and Indian Ambassador Talmiz Ahmad. Premji arrived in Riyadh on Friday on a working visit and held talks with Planning Minister Khaled Al-Gosaibi, STC president Khaled Al Molhem and chief executives of IT companies and major Saudi organisations. The planning ministry is engaged in drawing up plans for the future vision of the Saudi economy in which e-commerce will be a major driver. The Saudi projects include an end-to-end ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) implementation project from Saudi Polyolefins Company as well as a full-fledged ERP implementation project for Riyadh Pharma and Al Haya Medical Co. "We won these projects against global competition," Premji said, adding Wipro has deployed over 50 consultants on these projects. "We are looking at the possibility of setting up our own office in the kingdom." Premji said Wipro is committed to building a strong business base in Saudi Arabia. "We will continue to provide value through our vast global experience, robust quality processes, in-depth understanding of various domains and comprehensive range of high value IT Services." Prince Turki bin Abdullah said India had been an important trade partner to the kingdom and Wipro's entry to the Saudi market would create the much needed infrastructure in the kingdom's IT sector. Indian envoy Ahmad said the IT sector best projected India's image abroad and there was good scope for expanding relations in this area since Saudi Arabia was according priority to IT. During the Middle East's largest IT show in Dubai last month, Wipro Infotech president Suresh Vaswani said the company was committed to increasing business in the region. Having started operations in the region in June 2001, in just under two years it has built a strong customer base. "When we decided to expand into the Middle East, Dubai was the first destination for us. We are happy with our performance in the region and have received an encouraging response from our customers," he said. "We have won customer confidence through a combination of our proposition of value added IT services, backed by global experience and robust quality processes. We are aiming to consolidate our business across the Middle East."
Source: IANS
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