When I started my career, I wanted to be recognised as a professional rather than a woman: Wipro’s Sandhya Arun 

In her 28 years of professional career, Sandhya Arun has held leadership roles across business strategy, functional and technology consulting, sales and marketing and global delivery. The self-confessed “wonderer and a wanderer” is currently the Vice President and Sector Delivery Head, Integrated Digital Engineering and Application Services (IDEAS) of Wipro Ltd.

At Analytics India Magazine’s Women In AI Conference: The Rising 2022.  Sandhya spoke about how Wipro leveraged AI to drive the digital transformation of global organisations.

Watch all the recorded sessions of Rising 2022 here>>

Evolution

Over the last 75 years, Wipro has honed its capabilities in design, digital, strategy, engineering, AI, and cybersecurity, alongside building strong global credentials.

“The years following 2010 were my favourite part. This was when Wipro was committed to riding the digital wave and launched “Wipro Digital” as a line of business within the enterprise. It was almost like Wipro was the benevolent venture capitalist (Wipro Ventures), and Digital was the emerging start-up they funded. It was super exciting to be a part of the founding group,” Sandhya said.

At the time, Wipro had acquired the global cloud services company Appirio, known for creating next-generation worker and customer experiences. The acquisition positioned Wipro as one of the world’s largest cloud transformation practices and a game-changer in today’s as-a-service and digital economy. Appirio also introduced Wipro to Topcoder, a leading crowdsourcing marketplace connecting over a million designers, developers and data scientists with customers worldwide. “Today, clients use Topcoder products to deliver high-quality, repeatable outcomes that can be easily plugged into sprints and innovation cycles,” she said. In addition, Wipro Digital also acquired Designit, a strategic design firm specialising in designing transformative product-service experiences.

The company even established Rapid Prototyping Labs or Protolabs to help clients build and test proof-of-concept with emerging and next-generation technologies in an accelerated manner. “Protolabs plays a key role in helping customers design and conceptualise their digital businesses and alter their business portfolio mix,” she added.

The AI era

Artificial Intelligence is at the core of any digital transformation initiative driving the experience and intelligence quotient of its processes through the infusion of intelligence and automation. Enterprises are focused on using data analytics and AI to navigate disruption.

Sandhya said her focus has been on traditional companies hopping on the digital bandwagon for the first time or those that rely a great deal on legacy systems. “We want to help such companies transform, become agile and nimble!” she said. 

“For me, it is important to be connected with a larger purpose than work and quarterly results. So social responsibility is a must! We, at Wipro, believe business fuels our purpose, and purpose fuels our business. The Azim Premji Foundation owns 66% of Wipro’s economic interest,” said Sandhya Arun. 

Wipro has been recognised as one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies by the Ethisphere Institute for the 10th successive year. 

Diversity & inclusion

As much as 36.4% of Wipro’s employees are now women. The company has also offered unconscious bias training to over 183,339 employees. 

“When I started my career, I wanted to be recognised as a professional rather than a woman. That was a mistake. There was no reason for me to hide my femininity,” said Sandhya Arun. 

Wipro is recognised as one of the Best Places to Work for LGBTQ+ Equality by the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index 2022. Additionally, The company has won the ‘Best Employer for Persons with Disabilities’ and second runner-up for ‘Best Employer for D&I’ in the large category at the 2nd ASSOCHAM Inclusion & Diversity Excellence Awards.