726: The Opportunity Beyond Arbitrage | Manish Dugar, CFO, Mphasis

Back in the early 2000s, the use of videoconferencing to conduct job interviews remained rather rare in most parts of the world—and India was no different. What made Manish Dugar’s interview experience still rarer was the fact he had participated in 18 different video calls over a period of 3 months for a single job opportunity. Says Dugar: “Over that span of interviews, I became almost as knowledgeable about IT services as any professional in that sector.” Nonetheless, Dugar recalls, he had some reservations about Wipro Technologies, a tech services company based in Bangalore, India, that had recently begun to distinguish itself in a number of areas—including its thorough vetting of job candidates.   “It did not seem so exciting for me to leave a big name company in the north of India and relocate to the south to become part of an industry that was not as well known,” explains Dugar, who at the time was working for Coca-Cola India in Delhi. What’s more, the Bangalore of 20 or more years ago was far different from the dynamic technology hub that it is known as today. “Those who are familiar with India know that the south is much more cosmopolitan today and people can move around freely—but back in those days, the north was the north and the south was the south,” observes Dugar, who ultimately joined Wipro and quickly advanced upward into a series of financial management roles in which he observed firsthand the financial and operational levers required to scale the business to accommodate explosive growth. “From 2001 to 2008, $150 million in revenue grew to become $8 billion,” reports Dugar, who—after several promotions within the company—was named CFO of Wipro Technologies roughly 7 years after his arrival. Reflecting back on some of his early reservations about joining Wipro, Dugar says that he turned to his father, who had thus far seemed reluctant to possibly influence his son’s decisions. Remembers Dugar: “He told me, ‘If the company has done so many interviews, the position must be very important to them. It’s one thing to work for a company that has a big brand, but it’s another to work for a company that really values you.’” –Jack Sweeney