Thierry Delaporte

Thierry Delaporte served as CEO and Managing Director of Wipro Limited from July 2020 to early 2024, becoming the first non-Indian and the first external hire to lead one of India's "Big Four" IT services companies. A French national who spent over 25 years at Capgemini, most recently as COO, Delaporte was recruited by Wipro chairman Rishad Premji to transform a company that had underperformed peers TCS, Infosys, and HCL for years. Delaporte's diagnosis was that Wipro's problems were structural, not tactical. The company was organized into dozens of overlapping service lines with no clear market focus. He restructured the entire organization into four global industry sectors (banking, healthcare, consumer, technology), eliminated internal fiefdoms, and established a "large deals" team focused on transformational contracts worth $100M+. The results were immediate: Wipro's large deal pipeline grew from near-zero to a consistent $1–2B per quarter. His M&A strategy was equally aggressive. Delaporte acquired Capco (financial consulting, $1.45B), Rizing (SAP consulting), and several smaller firms to build domain expertise and move Wipro up the consulting value chain. These acquisitions gave Wipro capabilities that took competitors years to build organically. However, the integration of acquired companies and the retention of key talent remained ongoing challenges. Delaporte's tenure illustrated both the potential and the limits of transforming a large Indian IT company. While he succeeded in improving growth rates, deal quality, and market positioning, Wipro's stock underperformed during the broader 2023–2024 IT services downturn driven by reduced enterprise tech spending. His successor faces the challenge of maintaining the strategic focus Delaporte built while adapting to the generative AI disruption that threatens traditional IT outsourcing models.