Time Magazine, in its feature ‘People To Watch in International Business’, christened her as the ‘Oustsourcing Wunderkind’. India Today listed her among the Top 50 youth icons of the country. Today, Sangita Singh is the youngest ever Senior Vice President of Wipro Technologies. In 36 months, she has more than doubled the revenue of Wipro’s Enterprise Application Services (EAS) practice at nearly half-a-billion-dollar run rate; making EAS one of Wipro’s largest service lines.

It was a normal day for Sangita Singh in office. Suddenly, she found her door opening and none other than Azim Premji and Vivek Paul, then CEO at Wipro, walked into her room. She was nibbling some ‘channa’. Looking at her Premji said, “So you seem to have a lot of horse power, why don’t you take over the EAS business unit?” It was a bombshell, and the only word that she uttered was “What?” Even as she was reeling from the shock and thinking whether to commit or not, came the organizational announcement: Sangita Singh, Chief Marketing Officer, is the SVP - EAS business unit.

Today after three years, the unit she heads has doubled the revenue at nearly half-a-billion-dollar run rate; making it one of Wipro’s largest service lines. At a quite young age, Sangita has been able to impact the business of a billion dollar company like Wipro at a global level - a feat not most would even dream to make an attempt at. For a person who had been involved in the marketing side of the business, pulling this feat had been much more challenging. Steering a global team of 6,500, at 36, this youngest Senior Vice President of Wipro has her hands full, driving the exponential growth that the company had envisaged. Acknowledging her achievement, Time Magazine christened her ‘Outsourcing Wunderkind’ in its ‘People to Watch in International Business’ feature in November 2005.

“The initial days of transition were an agony. I did not have a clear knowledge of what the new role entailed. Suddenly I found myself facing the responsibilities for project deliveries, business expansion, and profit and loss. I was now directly involved with the company’s growth and had to deliver successfully on a quarter-to-quarter basis,” she recalls. For Wipro, the growth of the EAS business had become very critical, as it had to compete with IBM and Accenture for higher value consulting work. Sangita had to convince clients, majority of them in North America, that Wipro was up to the task. Though initially skeptical about her ability to effectively take over this role, she decided to take up the challenge and embraced this opportunity as a platform for learning and growing with the organization.

Moving Up the Ladder
An engineering graduate from REC Durgapur, Sangita had never belonged to that select group of students who had envisioned and chalked out their entire career path. Instead, all she had longed for after graduation was a job to become independent. So, when HCL conducted a campus placement, she jumped at the first opportunity available and won herself a job in sales and marketing. Within a few months after joining HCL her hopes of independency were truncated short as her parents decided to get her married. Post marriage, she relocated to Bangalore and joined Wipro as a senior management trainee. Still a person who did not have much vision about her career, she was very lucky to find a mentor in her husband, who taught her the ins and outs of the IT industry and helped her build a vision for herself. With her dynamism and newly found enthusiasm Sangita quickly moved up the ladder donning new roles and responsibilities. “He totally changed my outlook towards my profession and I became very focused and vocal about my opinions, and was sure of what I wanted,” says Sangita. It was this attitude that led her to the dream she had dreamt for herself.