Premji, promoter group entities sold 230 mn shares during Wipro buyback

Azim Premji and other promoter group entities sold about 22.46 crore shares worth over Rs 7,300 crore during the Wipro buyback offer that closed last month.

In a regulatory filing on Wednesday, Wipro said it had bought back 32.3 crore equity shares under the buyback scheme at Rs 325 apiece, and the total amount utilised was about Rs 10,499.99 crore.

Approximately 6.12 crore shares from Azim Premji Partner representing Zash Traders, 6.03 crore shares from Azim Premji Partner representing Prazim Traders and 5.02 crore shares from Azim Premji Partner representing Hasham Traders were accepted under the buyback, it added.

About 4.05 crore shares from Azim Premji Trust and 1.22 crore shares from Azim Premji were also accepted under the buyback offer, the filing said.

Over 1.34 crore shares were sold by Life Insurance Corporation of India during the process, it added.

Post the buyback, the promoter group now holds 74.05 per cent stake in Wipro.

Billionaire Azim Premji helps create India's newest tech unicorn, Icertis

Billionaire Azim Premji has helped create India’s latest tech unicorn: Afast-rising software start-up that symbolises the growing investor interest in the Asian nation’s enterprise technology space.

Icertis, which competes with SAP SE and Oracle Corp. to help businesses manage contracts in the cloud, has raised $115 million, propelling it to unicorn status as investors flock to enterprise software makers.

At the advanced-stage funding round in Bellevue, Washington and Pune, India-based Icertis was co-led by Greycroft Partners LLC and PremjiInvest, the fund managed by the family office of Indian tech billionaire Premji. Existing investors including B Capital Group, Eight Roads Ventures and Cross Creek Advisors participated. With this, Icertis has raised over $211 million.

The enterprise software segment is heating up as investors from Tiger Global Management to Sequoia and Accel scour the industry for India’s next startup giants. Many are expected to be business- rather than consumer-focused, as the country’s talent pool shifts from IT outsourcing services for global clients toward designing and providing online software.

Icertis said it now helps customers worldwide manage over 5.7 million contracts, from supply chain and procurement deals to employee agreements and nondisclosure pacts, that have a total value of more than $1 trillion.

“As contracts get converted from static documents to digital assets for the first time in history, every dollar in or out is governed by a contract, putting them at the heart of every enterprise,” said Samir Bodas, Icertis’s co-founder and chief executive officer. “Every global company faces unprecedented global competition and needs software to manage contracts.”

Icertis is currently valued at “well north of one billion dollars,” Bodas added. The company will use the additional funding to grow its business, including by expanding sales and marketing. Global compliance demands involving Brexit, tariffs, European data privacy regulations as well as rapid digitization has worked in Icertis’s favor, while technologies like artificial intelligence helped enhance the sophistry of its services.

“We have been able to ride the technology wave and assert leadership in the space despite large competitors,” Bodas said, citing consultancies Forrester Research and Gartner.

Icertis works on a subscription model, charging customers based on the number of contracts drawn up and tracked using its software. MGI Research forecasts the total spending by companies for such contract management at over $20 billion from 2018 to 2022, with services on the cloud growing around 37% annually over the same period.

Founded in 2009 when Bodas and friend Monish Darda began exploring cloud-based applications, Icertis in 2015 homed in on building a contract management platform. Today, more than 600 of its 850 employees are based in Pune, where the product is developed. The startup operates a dozen offices from Sofia to Sydney.

Azim Premji outlines four key areas for Wipro's growth at his last AGM

In his last address to shareholders as Executive Chairman of Wipro, Azim Premji on Tuesday said the information technology (IT) services firm is focusing on four new-age technology areas such as digital, cloud, engineering services, and cybersecurity to drive its growth.

After more than five decades of chairmanship of the company, Premji will pass on the mantle to his son Rishad Premji at the end of July, though he will continue to serve on the board as non-executive director and founder chairman.

“Based on the approval from the board, we have decided to step up our investments significantly in these four big bets,” said Premji, addressing the shareholders at the 73rd annual general meeting held in Bengaluru on Tuesday.

Apart from investing in new technologies, Premji also cited the example of divesture of Wipro’s datacentre business during the last financial year as a bid to remain lean as a business, which improved the return on capital employed by the company.

On the future leadership under Rishad, the outgoing chairman said he brought new ways of thinking, experience, and competence that will lead Wipro to greater heights. “He has been an integral part of the leadership team since 2007, and has a deep understanding of the company, business strategy, culture, and heritage,” Premji said.

After stepping down from the executive role, Premji said he would dedicate most of his time and energy to the philanthropic efforts of the Azim Premji Foundation.

“My own thinking of wealth and philanthropy is that we must remain ‘trustees’ of our wealth for society, not its owners. As announced earlier, I have irrevocably renounced more of my personal assets and earmarked them to the endowment which supports the Azim Premji Foundation’s philanthropic activities,” Premji said.

Currently, the total value of the corpus donated by Premji stands at around $21 billion, constituting 67 per cent of economic ownership of Wipro. In wealth terms, this is the highest-ever commitment of any Indian business tycoon towards charitable activities.

The Premji Foundation, set up in 2001, works to improve access to primary education in India, including some of its most disadvantaged parts. Premji’s philanthropic initiatives also help in improving the lives of street children and the physically-challenged. The Foundation also runs the Azim Premji University in Bengaluru.

Last month, Wipro announced a major reshuffle in the top management in which apart from passing on the mantle of chairmanship to Rishad, the IT firm also announced Abidali Neemuchwala as managing director, in addition to his role as chief executive officer.