Wipro takes over consulting team of Australian design firm Syfte

Expanding its reach in the Australia and Asia-Pacific region, Indian IT service provider Wipro has integrated the strategic design consulting team of Australian design agency Syfte, it said in a statement.

Syfte’s team of designers will be absorbed within Designit, Wipro’s strategic design arm, the statement added.

As part of the transaction, Syfte’s founder Katja Forbes will be retained as managing director of Designit, Australia and New Zealand and will be based from the Sydney office, the press note stated.

“Wipro has a well-established presence in Australia. With this expansion, we now bring a substantial and differentiated design and local engineering capability to the market,” said Rajan Kohli, president of Wipro Digital.

Wipro Digital and Designit serve clients from 18 digital pods around the world.

Syfte was founded in 2014 by Forbes, a design educator at the University of Sydney and an international director on the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) Global Board. The company offers research, user design, customer design, service design and content strategy to clients in aviation, banking, retail, government and not-for-profit.

“As we expand into Australia, with the addition of talent from Syfte, we are now significantly better positioned to co-create the digital agenda for our Asia Pacific client base,” said Humberto Matas, global managing director, Designit.

Wipro’s acquisitions

Over the past years, Wipro has made a number of acquisitions. Its most recent one was in July this year, when it agreed to buy Alight HR Services India Pvt. Ltd, the Indian arm of US-based Alight Solutions, for $117 million (Rs 800 crore) in cash.

In March this year, the tech giant, through its investment arm Wipro Ventures, picked up a minority stake in US-based artificial intelligence startup Avaamo Inc..

In October 2017, Wipro Digital said it had acquired design and business strategy consultancy firm Cooper Software Inc for $8.5 million (around Rs 55.4 crore) in an all-cash deal. The transaction helped Wipro expand its digital capabilities in North America.

To expand its presence in Latin American, Wipro bought Brazilian IT firm InfoSERVER SA for $8.7 million in January 2017 and in 2016, it acquired cloud services company Appirio Inc. for $500 million (Rs 3,340 crore) to strengthen its presence in the US. The Appirio deal was Wipro’s second largest buy after its $600-million acquisition of US IT firm Infocrossing in 2007.

Besides Latin America and the US, Wipro has also boosted its presence in Europe by acquiring German IT consulting firm cellent AG for 73.5 million euros (about Rs 518 crore) in 2015.