Bengaluru: Headwinds from the US-China trade war sting business deals of Indian software major Wipro, its Chief Executive Abidali Neemuchwala said on Tuesday.
"Some of our customers and their supply chains are impacted in certain sectors by the overhang of macro-uncertainty arising out of the trade war between the US and China," he told reporters here.
Noting that the demand environment, however, remained unchanged for IT spends, Neemuchwala said the company's business in the US market grew 9.4 per cent year-on-year while Europe was weak.
"We see a robust pipeline and the momentum of order book in the second quarter was better than in the first quarter," he said.
On the outlook over the next two quarters, Neemuchwala said in the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) vertical, the company had a set of offerings and a robust pipeline of digital deals.
"The growth in the BFSI segment, however, decelerated due to softness in the spending by the banking and capital market clients in some pockets," he said.
The restructuring of the company's business operations in India and the Gulf region was on track, as evident from some of the deals it won, like ICICI Bank.
"We see early signs of recovery in manufacturing and health verticals. We also see an uptick in demand in health outside of HPS (Health Plan Services)," Neemuchwala said.
On hiring, Chief Human Resource Officer Saurabh Govil said the vendor as a company has given up 'just in time' hiring strategy.
"Instead, we have been building a cadre, with a strong bench strength over the last eight quarters," he said.
In the first two quarters of 2019-20, the firm hired 9,000 techies.
"Our focus is to hire people from campuses and train a new cadre. It is not about just in time hiring," said Govil.
Chief Operating Officer Bhanu Murthy said the focus was on hiring more locals to build the cadre across its development and delivery centres.
"We are investing in our delivery centres in the US, Britain and places where we operate," he said.
Neemuchwala said the company achieved 68 per cent employee localization in the US, which generates about 60 of its business.
Read more: US-China trade war to drag down global growth: IMF
