Wipro plans to invest $200 million to its venture arm, Wipro Ventures, in its latest round of funding to accelerate the focus on early- to mid-stage startups. This is the fourth round of investment raised by Wipro Ventures since its inception in 2015.
This brings Wipro Ventures’ total investment to $500 million and will be directed towards startups that align with Wipro’s strategic priorities.
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Wipro Ventures will invest in enterprise software startups working in areas such as artificial intelligence, data & analytics, cybersecurity and cloud infrastructure.
Biplab Adhya, managing partner and head of Wipro Ventures, said the new capital will be deployed towards both new investments and follow-on funding for existing portfolio companies. Wipro Ventures is looking for opportunities across IT enterprises, seeking to create a collaborative ecosystem where startups, clients and Wipro businesses can work together, he said.
“Today’s 10-year anniversary celebrates a decade of success, marked by 37 impactful investments, 12 successful exits, three funds managing a total of $300 million and over 600 deployments across 250+ customers using solutions from our portfolio companies,” Adhya said. It has also invested in multiple early-stage, enterprise-focused and cybersecurity-themed venture funds in India, the US, and Israel.
Wipro Ventures typically makes three to five investments per year, with the check size ranging between $1 million and $10 million per investment.
Regarding generative AI (GenAI), Wipro Ventures’ strategy focuses on middleware investments while continuing to evaluate opportunities in small language models (SLMs). “With GenAI on the cusp of wider enterprise adoption, we see this as the perfect time to increase our investments and promote GenAI-based applications for our customers,” Adhya said.
While Wipro Ventures does invest in AI, Adhya clarified that these investments are separate from Wipro’s broader $1-billion AI commitment.
Several startups that Wipro Ventures has invested in have contributed to Wipro’s growth. One notable success was a company acquired by Palo Alto Networks in 2019, which became part of its security platform, Cortex.
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Another example is Tricentis, a company in the test automation domain. “It’s a scaled-out company with significant revenues. We’ve been working with them for the last seven or eight years and have taken their solutions to hundreds of Wipro customers.”
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