Wipro chief - Indian companies heading for the top

The already-blurred distinction between Indian outsourcers and the traditional big services companies will soon disappear, the head of tech giant Wipro has claimed.

As Indian services companies look at bigger deals and more complex consultancy, while traditional services companies expand their Indian presence, the "demarcation lines" between them will vanish, said Azim Premji chairman and managing director of Indian tech giant Wipro.

He told silicon.com in an exclusive interview: "They are copying our model we are copying their model and the customer is the net gainer."

And he added: "I think you will have a least two [Indian] companies that are in the top 10 global services providers in the next five years. I think customers will have the top three or four Indian companies in their evaluation set for all major orders."

His claim is in line with the verdict of a recent silicon.com CIO Jury.

Premji also said it would be decades before rising wages reduced the cost-saving potential of using Indian companies.

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He said: "Wages are going up, they're going up 12 to 14 per cent a year. But the nice thing is that if you compare yourself with western nations our average salary for an engineer from college is about $7,500 a year - a similar engineer in the UK costs $55,000 a year roughly.

"If your salaries were to go up by three per cent a year and ours were to go up by 13 per cent a year it will take 25 years for the two salaries to merge."

Click here to read the full interview.