Wipro aims to make $150 million from intellectual property this FY

BENGALURU: Wipro has set a target of $150 million in revenue from its intellectual property (IP) in this financial year, said people aware of the matter. Last year, the Bengaluru-headquartered software services company had clocked a revenue of about $80 million from IP-led business, in keeping with chief executive Abidali Neemuchwala’s strategy to extract more value from the segment, said a person with direct knowledge of the IP business.

“Wipro generated revenue of nearly $80 million from IP last year and this year, it has a target of about $150 million,” the person told ET on condition of anonymity. “IPs that are sold independently help the company fetch better revenue, but clients do not get priority in the ones that are bundled with services.” Wipro did not officially confirm the revenue target.

In 2017-18, the company’s revenue from IT services stood at $8.06 billion. In October, announcing the September quarter results, Neemuchwala had said the company had filed 50 new patents as part of a drive for non-linearity and IP, taking the number of total patents applied for to 2,071. “More than 40% of patents granted to Wipro is in new age technologies,” he had said.

Wipro Promax, which facilitates trade promotion, is sold independently and is a key revenue generator among patented IPs. Like Promax, Wipro has IPs in the virtual desktop infrastructure segment, which helps large enterprises such as banks to maintain confidentiality and centrally manage data.

Ajay Bhaskar, vice president-strategy and IP at Wipro said the “key objective” of the IP strategy is to ensure it quickly takes to market differentiated solutions in order to address customer pain points. “Our IP portfolio is spread across industries and technologies. Hence, it helps us drive replicability.”

Wipro Technologies (Wipro Ltd)