Wipro Acquires Minority Stake In Opera Solutions

Wipro announced yesterday that it has entered into an agreement to enter into a strategic partnership and buy a minority stake in Opera Solutions, LLC. It will invest USD 30 million in the privately held global Big Data science company.

Opera Solutions is a leader in Big Data science and predictive analysis. It offers analytical services across various industry verticals. The company is a provider of signal products, which are typically cloud-based and implemented for companies to access predictive analytics solutions.

This acquisition will help Wipro expand its footprint in the big data analytics space. It would combine Opera’s machine learning expertise, pre-discovered predictive signals and algorithms with Wipro’s domain and technology expertise and global delivery model to create industry-specific solutions. Moreover, the synergy would be beneficial considering Wipro’s end to end solutions provision and Opera’s ability to scale big data.

Big data has tremendous opportunity. It has humongous potential to transform business, add to profitability and productivity. With the correct technological inputs, Wipro will be able to offer comprehensive solutions to its customers and gain considerably.

This is the second acquisition for Wipro (IT business) in the last year. In May 2012, Wipro acquired Promax Applications Group (PAG) for a sum of AUD 35 million. PAG is a leading player in trade promotion planning, management, and optimisation solutions space and extended Wipro’s strength in analytics and information management systems.

Inorganic growth is being used by many big IT players to expand offerings, fill gaps, cross-sell, expand in terms of geography and to tap potential areas. Recent acquisitions include TCS acquiring French IT services firm Alti, Infosys’ acquisition of consulting firm Lodestone and Cognizant’s acquisition of six C1 group companies.

There is no doubt that this acquisition will help Wipro in gaining expertise, tapping areas with huge potential and strengthening its service offerings. It will help Wipro in the long-run and improve outlook for the IT major.