Originally published on Digiday
Count one more new agency entrant that can boast serious scale. Over the last few years, Wipro, the software and outsourcing giant based out of India, has slowly put muscle behind Wipro Digital, its agency and design services arm.
Last week, it announced the acquisition of design agency Cooper, enhancing the agency services capabilities it started building with the 2015 acquisition of strategy and design agency Designit.
Wipro Digital is on a growth tear: Overall, the company boasts 600 design and creative employees, plus just over 2,000 working in engineering. While Wipro doesn’t break out Wipro Digital from its overall revenue results, Wipro Digital global head Rajan Kohli said “digital business,” which includes the agency services plus some mobility and cloud work, accounts for 23.5 percent of revenue — about $458 million — up from 17.5 percent in the same period last year.
Wipro, a $7 billion company better known for software export and outsourcing services than creative chops, hopes to combine its engineering talent — largely based in India — with creative and design services from its new acquisitions, creating an “end-to-end” solution similar to what consulting giants like Accenture promise in the U.S. “If a client just wants to solve a tactical design problem or launch a marketing campaign, several agencies can do it,” said Kohli. “But if a client wants to create a minimally viable product, a design, a prototype, and then connect into enterprise and applications, very few companies can.”
Kohli also touts Wipro’s global scale. For example, he spoke on the phone from Australia, where he was working on a project with an Australian client that a Spanish company recently acquired. Now, the client has hired Wipro’s Spanish and Australian design studios.
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